Quotes about Progress

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.

Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type. What is this ideal? It is God. Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.

It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory

All civilisation begins with a theocracy and ends with a democracy. This law of liberty succeeding unity is written in architecture.

People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

Die Wissenschaft muss mit glatten Wangen begonnen werden und nicht erst mit runzeligen, wenn man in ihr etwas erreichen will.

But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say no to progress, it is not the future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting To-morrow, and that is to die.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognized: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling.

It is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.

Revolution cannot really be conquered... If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow. Tomorrow performs its work irresistibly, and it does it from today.