62 Inspirational Progress Quotes

In our journey through life, progress is often the beacon that guides us forward. Whether we're striving for personal growth, professional success, or societal change, the concept of progress keeps us motivated and inspired. Quotes have a unique way of distilling complex emotions into powerful, memorable words, and they serve as reminders of the potential lying within each of us to move forward. In this post, we've carefully selected 62 inspirational progress quotes that capture the spirit of advancement and encourage perseverance in the face of challenges. Let these words serve as your companion as you continue to push boundaries and reach new heights.

1. “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” - Frank Zappa

2. “The greatest discovery any alien anthropologist could make about our culture is our overriding response to failure: If it didn't work last year, do it AGAIN this year (and if possible do it MORE)” - Daniel Quinn

3. “That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a syphilitic man; in that case the Catholic Church says, 'This is an indissoluble sacrament. You must endure celibacy or stay together. And if you stay together, you must not use birth control to prevent the birth of syphilitic children.' Nobody whose natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things should continue.That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. 'What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.” - Bertrand Russell

4. “The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it's easy to fall off.” - Anderson Cooper

5. “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” - Alasdair Gray

6. “Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” - robert heinlein

7. “Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” - C.S. Lewis

8. “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

9. “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

10. “In these days of faith-cures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities – why, the simple old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel.” - Walter de la Mare

11. “For the admirable gift of himself, and for the magnificent service he renders humanity, what reward does our society offer the scientist? Have these servants of an idea the necessary means of work? Have they an assured existence, sheltered from care? The example of Pierre Curiee, and of others, shows that they have none of these things; and that more often, before they can secure possible working conditions, they have to exhaust their youth and their powers in daily anxieties. Our society, in which reigns an eager desire for riches and luxury, does not understand the value of science. It does not realize that science is a most precious part of its moral patrimony. Nor does it take sufficient cognizance of the fact that science is at the base of all the progress that lightens the burden of life and lessens its suffering. Neither public powers nor private generosity actually accord to science and to scientists the support and the subsidies indispensable to fully effective work.” - Marie Curie

12. “Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.” - George Monbiot

13. “We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.” - Alan Moore

14. “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.” - Ray Bradbury

15. “The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness not to stop your progress.” - Steve Maraboli

16. “Change is the parent of progress.” - Steve Maraboli

17. “But to unite in a permanent religious institution which is not to be subject to doubt before the public even in the lifetime of one man, and thereby to make a period of time fruitless in the progress of mankind toward improvement, thus working to the disadvantage of posterity - that is absolutely forbidden. For himself (and only for a short time) a man may postpone enlightenment in what he ought to know, but to renounce it for posterity is to injure and trample on the rights of mankind.” - Immanuel Kant

18. “The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.” - Benjamin Disraeli

19. “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.” - Oscar Wilde

20. “So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark.” - Quentin Crisp

21. “Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.” - Boris Pasternak

22. “The New Dimension is peaceful, and all work here just as they do on Earth. It’s a place where learning, knowledge and wisdom are essential to that work.It is not corrupt like the Earth Plane, and there they are free from all of the corruption that exists on Earth today.We created this New Dimension for growing and learning, as we did Earth.Minds here are advanced, as the knowledge that was acquired on Earth is now attuned to the minds of New Dimension souls.It is a slow process for all souls’ minds to learn and absorb knowledge and wisdom.Love is the answer for all kinds of souls to advance in the Universe. Through love, knowledge and wisdom are well earned.Critical thinking, the Earth Plane has gotten off track, forgetting or ignoring this most important key to progress.We all here in the Universe is working so hard with Earth souls to remind them that their purpose on Earth is to advance.First, they must love themselves if they are going to love all of those around them, if they are going to love other souls, if they are going to help less fortunate souls with love and kindness. All of this is part of Earth lessons they must learn.Once this is understood, we will attain peace of soul and mind…Progress is all that matters in the Universe!” - Solon

23. “We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. ” - H.G. Wells

24. “I am convinced that human history has not yet begun, that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric.” - Bartolomeo Vanzetti

25. “If only I had some grease I could fix some kind of a light," Ma considered. "We didn't lack for light when I was a girl before this newfangled kerosene was ever heard of.""That's so," said Pa. "These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraph and kerosene and coal stoves--they're good things to have, but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.” - Laura Ingalls Wilder

26. “We've forgotten much. How to struggle, how to rise to dizzy heights and sink to unparalleled depths. We no longer aspire to anything. Even the finer shades of despair are lost to us. We've ceased to be runners. We plod from structure to conveyance to employment and back again. We live within the boundaries that science has determined for us. The measuring stick is short and sweet. The full gamut of life is a brief, shadowy continuum that runs from gray to more gray. The rainbow is bleached. We hardly know how to doubt anymore. (“The Thing”)” - Richard Matheson

27. “I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.” - Henry Ford

28. “Every civilization depends on the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses” - Frank Herbert

29. “At the very time when we have been boasting of our enlightenment and knowledge and understanding, there is this tragic breakdown in personal relationships. ... For instance, we now have to have Marriage Guidance classes. Up to this century men and women were married without this expert advice which now seems to be so essential.” - David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

30. “False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.” - Charles Darwin

31. “Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.” - Robert A. Heinlein

32. “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

33. “Stagnation is self-abdication.” - Ryan Talbot

34. “The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes.” - Paul Karl Feyerabend

35. “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” - C.S. Lewis

36. “The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” - Christopher Hitchens

37. “There should be painless progression, attended by life and peace....Mortals will some day assert their freedom in the name of Almighty God....Dropping their present beliefs, they will recognize harmony and as the spiritual reality and discord as the material unreality. Chapter VII pp. 224 and 228 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” - Mary Baker Eddy

38. “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

39. “One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.” - Robert Pirsig

40. “The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.” - William Ellery Channing

41. “The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.” - G.K. Chesterton

42. “There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.” - Christopher Hitchens

43. “Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith—faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” - Eric Hoffer

44. “If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.” - Eric Hoffer

45. “Now I've been criticized for advocating that people push their boundaries because sometimes people get caught. Sometimes people get fired. Sometimes people lose their jobs because of pushing the boundaries too far, but it's an interesting experience. They found they didn't want to stay within those limitations that they were pushing. Once people find they can survive outside the limits, they're much happier. They don't want to feel trapped. So I think we can urge people to push the boundaries as far as they can, and if they get in trouble, fine; that's not too bad if that's what they want to do.” - Myles Horton

46. “There is no great discoveries and advances, as long as there is an unhappy child on earth. / Ne možemo govoriti o napretku čovječanstva, dok na svijetu ima nesretne djece.” - Albert Einstein

47. “A noble deed is a dream before it is reality. The oak sleeps in the acorn; the bird waits in the egg; and in the highest vision of the soul, a beautiful world waits to be realized.” - James Allen

48. “Stay More' is synonymous with 'Status Quo' in fact, there are people who believe, or who like to believe, that the name of the town was intended as an entreaty, beseeching the past to remain present.” - Donald Harington

49. “In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago. Computers have no effect on productivity because people learn to complicate and repeat tasks that have been made easier.” - Matt Ridley

50. “To progress is always to begin always to begin again” - Martin Luther

51. “I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.” - Alasdair Gray

52. “First steps are always the hardest but until they are taken the notion of progress remains only a notion and not an achievement.” - Aberjhani

53. “[Americans] were, for one thing, so smitten with the idea of progress that they invented things without having any idea whether those things would be of any use.” - Bill Bryson

54. “...she was probably having a few murderous thoughts of her own about any woman that touched him. Good, they were making progress.” - R.L. Mathewson

55. “Don't waste tomorrow on yesterday.” - Orrin Woodward

56. “And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent Godless people:Their only monument the asphalt roadAnd a thousand lost golf balls.” - T. S. Eliot

57. “Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind.” - Paul Kriwaczek

58. “So we are steaming along without any landmark; we can't gauge our speed. We are making progress and yet nothing is changing. It's not navigation but dreaming.” - Albert Camus The Fall

59. “People who make no mistakes lack boldness and the spirit of adventure. They are the brakes on the wheels of progress.” - Norman Vincent Peale

60. “Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there's you fellows who can't be trusted. And then there's the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren't enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.” - Ford Madox Ford

61. “So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.” - Bertrand Russell

62. “After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward.” - Zeena Schreck