Nov. 8, 2024, 9:45 a.m.
Inspiration often lies in the simplest of words, strung together to form powerful messages that can ignite passion, fuel ambition, and transform perspectives. In the realm of personal and professional growth, such inspiring words can be pivotal—offering guidance and motivation as we navigate the challenging yet rewarding journey of development. In this collection of the top 50 inspiring development quotes, we bring you pearls of wisdom from thinkers, innovators, and leaders across the globe. Whether you're seeking motivation to embark on a new endeavor or searching for the strength to persevere in your current path, these quotes are carefully curated to inspire and uplift, encouraging continuous evolution and self-improvement. Let these words be the spark that ignites your journey to becoming the best version of yourself.
1. “Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
2. “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.” - Winston Churchill
3. “Through others we become ourselves.” - Lev S. Vygotsky
4. “Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship” - Robert Green Ingersoll
5. “Half, Not Half-Assed” - 37signals
6. “In the plains the grass grows tall, since there is no one to cut it. There is no one to water it either.” - Vera Nazarian
7. “The American Society of Civil Engineers said in 2007 that the U.S. had fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure -- roads, bridges, schools, dams -- that it would take more than a trillion and half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard. Instead, these types of expenditures are being cut back. At the same time, public infrastructure around the world is facing unprecedented stress, with hurricanes, cyclones, floods and forest fires all increasing in frequency and intensity. It's easy to imagine a future in which growing numbers of cities have their frail and long-neglected infrastructures knocked out by disasters and then are left to rot, their core services never repaired or rehabilitated. The well-off, meanwhile, will withdraw into gated communities, their needs met by privatized providers. ” - Naomi Klein
8. “Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.” - Bernard Berenson
9. “Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.” - Kim Stanley Robinson
10. “What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.” - Muhammad Yunus
11. “Th direct elimination of elimination of poverty should be the objective of all development aid. Development should be viewed as a human rights issue, not as a question of simply increasing the gross national product (GNP).” - Muhammad Yunus
12. “People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.” - Muhammad Yunus
13. “Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies.” - Joseph E. Stiglitz
14. “India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.” - Shashi Tharoor
15. “He had also been demonstrative and intelligent from the very beginning, his questions startlingly insightful. She would watch him absorb a new idea and wonder what effect it would have on him, because, with Edgar, EVERYTHING came out, eventually, somehow. But the PROCESS – how he put together a story about the world’s workings – that was mysterious beyond all ken. In a way, she thought, it was the only disappointing thing about having a child. She’d imagined he would stay transparent to her, more PART of her, for so much longer. But despite the proximity of the daily work, Edgar had ceased long before to be an open book. A friend, yes. A son she loved, yes. But when it came to knowing his thoughts, Edgar could be opaque as a rock.” - David Wroblewski
16. “Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means—hard as it is to believe—that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there, too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms. And even a local company is likely to pay better than trying to earn money without a job: running an illegal street stall, working as a prostitute, or combing reeking landfills in cities like Manila to find recyclable goods.” - Tim Harford
17. “To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” - John F. Kennedy
18. “Is then no nook of English ground secureFrom rash assault?” - William Wordsworth
19. “Change, development and progress, according to the Islamic viewpoint, refer to the return to the genuine Islam enunciated and practised by the Holy Prophet (may God bless and give him Peace!) and his noble Companions and their Followers (blessing and peace be upon them all!) and the faith and practice of genuine Muslims after them; and they also refer to the self and mean its return to its original nature and religion (Islam).” - Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas
20. “Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.” - William Easterly
21. “Without an informed electorate, politicians will continue to use the bottom billion merely for photo opportunities, rather than promoting real transformation.” - Paul Collier
22. “Change in the societies at the very bottom must come predominantly from within; we cannot impose it on them.” - Paul Collier
23. “Suppose a country starts its independence with the three economic characteristics that globally make a country prone to civil war: low income, slow growth, and dependence upon primary commodity exports. It is playing Russian roulette. That is not just an idle metaphor: the risk that a country in the bottom billion falls into civil war in any five-year period is nearly one in six, the same risk facing a player of Russian roulette.” - Paul Collier
24. “We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. ... That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. [...]My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents' side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than in the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins, or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.” - Wallace Stegner
25. “Tough love may be tough to give, but it is a necessity of life and assurance of positive growth.” - T.F. Hodge
26. “There is a greater Christian faith than one which settles for the temporal happiness, and that is the augmentation of faith. The more faithful you become, the harder the obstacles get; but the harder the obstacles get, the tougher your spine grows; and the tougher your spine grows, the less dependent you are on man's approval. I came to know this about Christianity when valuing faith before comfort.” - Criss Jami
27. “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.” - Criss Jami
28. “Wisdom is nothing more than confirmed imagination: just because one did not study for his exam does not mean that he should leave it blank.” - Criss Jami
29. “A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician. The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.” - B.F. Skinner
30. “There is a master way with words which is not learned but is instead developed: a deaf man develops exceptional vision, a blind man exceptional hearing, a silent man, when given a piece of paper...” - Criss Jami
31. “Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.” - Criss Jami
32. “Faith, in its most correct form, never removes responsibility; it removes fear of responsibility. The results are complete opposites with the greater saying, 'God's will is my delight.” - Criss Jami
33. “I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.” - Criss Jami
34. “We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it.” - CHOGYAM TRUNGPA
35. “But as the Everglades continued to wither, a few of their colleagues began to wonder if conservation really should mean development more than preservation. These heretics did not believe that God had created man in order to 'improve' or 'redeem' nature; they found God's grace in nature itself.” - Michael Grunwald
36. “Human beings have always been an unfinished species, a story in the middle, a succession of families, tribes, and societies in transition to new awarenesses. Although we have always prided ourselves on our willingness to adapt to all habitats, and on our skill at prospering and making ourselves comfortable wherever we are -- in a meadow, in a desert, on the tundra, or out on the ocean -- we don't just adapt to places, or modify them in order to ease our burdens. We're the only species that over and over again has deliberately transformed our surroundings in order to stretch our capacity for understanding and provoke new accomplishments. And our growing and enhanced understanding is our most valuable, and our most vulnerable, inheritance.” - Tony Hiss
37. “... money should not be spent according to what the West considers the most dramatic kind of suffering.” - William Easterly
38. “The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.” - Criss Jami
39. “A lack of illusion is golden, and it is quite possible that creativity is the highest form of intelligence. One might further develop oneself in the creative sense and, therefore, at times, find some degree of shame more so than pride when having always followed that of the safe and ever-praised academia.” - Criss Jami
40. “Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.” - E.F. Schumacher
41. “Creativity sparks originality, which then manifests itself into what we call evolution. To depreciate imagination is to depreciate life.” - Al Stone
42. “It is in the nature of helping and counselling to be a process moving towards something rather than arriving at a state of completion.” - Pete Sanders
43. “A city is not an accident but the result of coherent visions and aims.” - Léon Krier
44. “It's a good sign but rare instance when, in a relationship, you find that the more you learn about the other person, the more you continue to desire them. A sturdy bond delights in that degree of youthful intrigue. Love loves its youth.” - Criss Jami
45. “As man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized.” - Robert G. Ingersoll
46. “It's much easier on the emotions when one sees life as an experiment rather than a struggle for popularity.” - Criss Jami
47. “Once upon a time, began the story of you.Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.And yet—the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story.” - Vera Nazarian
48. “As a writer of philosophy, it's good to ask oneself, 'Will I still believe this a week from now, or months, or even years?” - Criss Jami
49. “Businesses, like babies and books, need nurturing, time, energy, love, planning and, yes, money to develop, grow and prosper.” - Rachael Bermingham
50. “Our outer relationships are a mirror of the relationship and communication between our own inner male and female sides. Our outer relationships with a man or a woman are a possibility to understand our own inner man or woman.” - Swami Dhyan Giten