Progressive Quotes - Page 12

• The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.

  Hugo Black

  Religious, Wall, Church

  Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 1947.

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• We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

  Douglas MacArthur

  War, Discovery, Civilization

  Radio Broadcast to the Nation Following the USS Missouri Surrender Ceremony, delivered 2 September 1945, USS Missouri, Tokyo Bay, Japan

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• Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the products of chance and can feed nowhere else; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, and from this domain chance is barred. It is not to chance but to these conditions that eveloution owes its generally progressive cource, its successive conquests, and the impresssion it gives of a smooth and steady unfolding.

  Jacques Monod

  Science, Acceptance, Giving

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• We hope that there will be nothing that conflicts with anybody's religion or faith. We would never say a person's religion is not effective. We say, 'Would you be interested in something more effective?' We always put things in an optimistic, progressive perspective. 'Do you want to make your prayers more effective? Not that they are not effective, but do you want to help them become more effective?'

  John Templeton

  Prayer, Optimistic, Perspective

  "Sir John's Divine Gamble". Interview with Gary Wolf, www.wired.com. June 1, 1999.

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• The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is subject, the want of a universal language which renders translation necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of willful alteration, are themselves evidences that human language, whether in speech or print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of God.

  Thomas Paine

  Atheist, Mistake, Errors

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THOMAS PAINE Ultimate Collection: Political Works, Philosophical Writings, Speeches, Letters & Biography (Including Common Sense, The Rights of Man & The Age of Reason): The American Crisis, The Constitution of 1795, Declaration of Rights, Agrarian Justice, The Republican Proclamation, Anti-Monarchal Essay, Letters to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…”, p.406, e-artnow

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• Latter-day scepticism is fond of calling itself progressive; but scepticism is really reactionary. Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled. Instead of trying to break up new fields with its plough, it simply tries to break up the plough.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Trying, Calling, Fields

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• The ordinary naturalist is not sufficiently aware that when dogmatizing on what species are, he is grappling with the whole question of the organic world & its connection with the time past & with Man; that it involves the question of Man & his relation to the brutes, of instinct, intelligence & reason, of Creation, transmutation & progressive improvement or development. Each set of geological questions & of ethnological & zool. & botan. are parts of the great problem which is always assuming a new aspect.

  Charles Lyell

  Science, Past, Men

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• Geology is part of that remarkable dynamic process of the human mind which is generally called science and to which man is driven by an inquisitive urge. By noticing relationships in the results of his observations, he attempts to order and to explain the infinite variety of phenomena that at first sight may appear to be chaotic.

  Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

  Science, Men, Fire

  "The Scientific Character of Geology". The Journal of Geology, Vol. 69, No. 4, p. 454, July 1961.

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• The spirit is never at rest, but always engaged in progressive motion, giving itself new form.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Giving, Progress, Spirit

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• Women and people of color and young people especially are about to have this amazing opportunity to shift the political conversation in this country for the good of all of us, toward more progressive policies, and it's a really amazing and important time to be part of that.

  Sandra Fluke

  Inspirational, Country, Opportunity

  "Glamour Women Of The Year Awards Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lena Dunham, Zaha Hadid And Others" By Margaret Wheeler Johnson, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 13, 2012.

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• Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals.

  Deepak Chopra

  Motivational, Success, Encouragement

  Deepak Chopra (2010). “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams”, p.8, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

  Marian Wright Edelman

  Thinking, Talking, People

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• We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every aspect of human life and society. Some people regard this as good and "progressive," others regard it as tyrannical; but either way, it's a fact, a transformation as great as, say, the Industrial Revolution. Absolutely nothing is now beyond the scope of State power.

  Joseph Sobran

  People, Liberty, Facts

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• Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. If human nature cannot be improved by institutions, democracy is at best a more than usually safe form of political organization . . . . But if it is to work better as well as merely longer, it must have some leavening effect on human nature; and the sincere democrat is obliged to assume the power of the leaven. [Progressive]

  Herbert Croly

  Fall, Organization, Political

  Herbert Croly (2005). “The Promise of American Life”, p.400, Cosimo, Inc.

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• [S]tatism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others - on the grand scale. There is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other social program.

  Leonard Read

  Differences, Liberty, Income

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• At every crossroad on the way that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past.

  Maurice Maeterlinck

  Inspirational, Life, Fear

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• History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Spiritual, Political, Liberty

  "Letter: General Douglas MacArthur's 1951 speech is more appropriate in today's America". General Douglas MacArthur's speech, www.mlive.com. 1951.

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• The philosophy commonly called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Liberty, Cooperation

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Human Action”, p.188, Lulu Press, Inc

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• We cannot see how the evidence afforded by the unquestioned progressive development of organised existence-crowned as it has been by the recent creation of the earth's greatest wonder, MAN, can be set aside, or its seemingly necessary result withheld for a moment. When Mr. Lyell finds, as a witty friend lately reported that there had been found, a silver-spoon in grauwacke, or a locomotive engine in mica-schist, then, but not sooner, shall we enrol ourselves disciples of the Cyclical Theory of Geological formations.

  George Julius Poulett Scrope

  Witty, Science, Men

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• Science emerges from the other progressive activities of man to the extent that new concepts arise from experiments and observations, and that the new concepts in turn lead to further experiments and observations.

  James Bryant Conant

  Science, Men, Arise

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• In the animal world, on the other hand, the process of evolution is characterised by the progressive discrimination of the animal and vegetative functions, and a consequent differentiation of these two great provinces into their separate departments.

  Wilhelm Wundt

  Science, Animal, Hands

  Wilhelm Max Wundt (1969). “Principles of Physiological Psychology”

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• In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.

  Ivan Illich

  Two, Envy, Addiction

  Tools for Conviviality ch. 3 (1973)

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• If we compel the composer to write in terms of what the listener is able to hear, we flirt with the danger of freezing the evolution of musical language, whose progressive development comes about through transgressions of a given era's perceptual habits."

  Jean-Jacques Nattiez

  Music, Writing, Flirting

  Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990). “Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music”, p.99, Princeton University Press

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Reform, Dialect, Facts

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• The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.

  Ivan Illich

  Balance, Ends, Establishment

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