Progress Proverbs

Sayings about Progress

A foolish man may be known by six things: Anger without cause, speech without profit, change without progress, inquiry without object, putting trust in a stranger, and mistaking foes for friends. ~Arabian Proverbs

A man who develops himself is born twice. ~Argentine Proverbs

When your fortune improves, the columns of your house appear to be crooked. ~Armenian Proverbs

The public improves the speaker’s speech. ~Iranian Proverbs

Being young is a fault which improves daily. ~Swedish Proverbs

Before you prepare to improve the world, look around your own house three times. ~Chinese Proverbs

Rivalry between scholars improves science. ~ Chinese Proverb

Most people are in favor of progress, it’s the changes they don’t like. ~ Saying

If thy strength will serve, go forward in the ranks; if not, stand still. ~ Confucian Proverb

Progress is mediation that comes swiftly for those who try their hardest. ~ Saying

When a blind man carries a lame man, both go forward. ~ Swedish Proverb

Today’s progress was yesterday’s plan. ~ Saying

Little by little, a little becomes a lot. ~ Saying

I may not be there yet, but I’m closer than I was yesterday. ~ Saying

To change and to improve are two different things. ~German Proverbs

Work improves the harvest better than the field itself. ~Spanish Proverbs

You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back. ~ Traditional Proverb

He that will not look forward must look behind. ~Gaelic Proverbs

Unite to move forward. ~American Proverbs

Better retreat in honor than advance in disgrace. ~Serbian Proverbs

Quotations about Progress

Without a struggle, there can be no progress. ~ Frederick Douglass

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. ~ Khalil Gibran

Few men progress, except as they are pushed along by events. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

Progress is man’s indifference to the lessons of history. ~ Len Deighton

The progress of the world is the history of men who would not permit defeat to speak the final word. ~ Joseph R. Sizoo

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Man is a progressive being, and every enterprise in which he engages should be carried forward in obedience to this law of his nature. ~ James Lysander Enos

Intellectually, as politically, the direction of all true progress is towards greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas. ~ Christian Nestell Bovee

There is a period of life when we go back as we advance. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops. ~ Thomas J. Watson

We do more talking progress than we do progressing. ~ Will Rogers

We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves. Fear, desire, and hope are still pushing us on towards the future. ~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Progress is a tide. If we stand still we will surely be drowned. To stay on the crest, we have to keep moving. ~ Harold Mayfield

Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another. ~ Havelock Ellis

Progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution. ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The past is the present, and the present the future, to the non-progressive mind. ~ James Lendall Basford

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress. ~ Alfred Montapert

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones. ~ Blaise Pascal

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors. ~ E. M. Cioran

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress. ~ Sidney J. Harris

Revolutions never go backwards. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas. ~ Shirley Chisholm

Progress,–the stride of God! ~ Victor Hugo

The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future. ~ Frank Herbert

Every step of progress which the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake. ~ Wendell Phillips

We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life. ~ James Freeman Clarke

Nothing recedes like progress. ~ EE Cummings

The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals. ~ Madame de Stael

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. ~ Henry Ford

Progress always involves risk; you can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first. ~ Frederick Wilcox

Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity. ~ Thor Heyerdahl

Speculation and the exploration of ideas beyond what we know with certainty are what lead to progress. ~ Lisa Randall

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. ~ Richard Feynman

The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come. ~ Ian Knabel

We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. ~ Tom Stoppard

Without deviation, progress is not possible. ~ Frank Zappa

Moral excellence is the bright consummate flower of all progress. ~ Charles Sumner

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Unless we progress, we regress. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. ~ Samuel Butler

I make progress by having people around me who are smarter than I am and listening to them. And I assume that everyone is smarter about something than I am. ~ Henry J. Kaiser

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. ~ George Orwell

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Progression is nature’s ordinance. ~ O.S.Fowler

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress. ~ Herbert Hoover

Progressis the activity of today and the assurance of tomorrow. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All progressis precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. ~ Norbert Wiener

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. ~ Ronald Reagan

Progress is the child of doubt. ~ Careades

It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you. ~ Tony Benn

Cost is the father and compensation the mother of progress. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

Too much looking backward … is bad for progress. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

I will go anywhere, provided it is forward. ~ David Livingstone

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter. ~ Nadine Gordimer

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. ~ Alan Turing

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Progress is the stride of God. ~ Victor Hugo

Progress is a set of assumptions. ~ Edward Albee

Progress however, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once; and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step. ~ Samuel Smiles

What we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance. ~ Henry Havelock Ellis

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance. ~ Edward Gibbon

Each man must learn his own ideal and try to accomplish it: that is a surer way of progress than to take the ideas of another. ~ Romain Rolland

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. ~ Philip Roth

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. ~ William McKinley

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. ~ Russell Baker

Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long. ~ Ogden Nash

If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far ahead. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul. ~ Emma Goldman

The wheels of progress do not stop. The world advances toward and into a better life, and will advance until, leaving the hard, clumsy and jarring pavements of the marts of selfishness behind it, it will strike off joyously into the broad avenue of the millennium. ~ Josiah Gilbert Holland

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

One who accepts the general ideas of his time gets along smoothest, but he does the least for progress. ~ Lewis F. Korns

All progress is experimental. ~ John Jay Chapman