John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

Think about it for a brief moment. Suspend disbelief. Wind the clock forward 100 years. Do you think, as a species, we will still be struggling with the things that vex us today? Will we still be arguing about the same stuff? We will still be eating Cocoa Puffs? We are at the end of the beginning.

The more you do, the more experience you have and the next time it will be easier to choose the right thing.

You can't all of a sudden go to sleep one night and wake up Martha Stewart. It's bit by bit by bit.

A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is found,—a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape, a cannibal, an eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal,—a certain degree of progress from this extreme is called Civilization.

It is inherent in human consciousness to improve. So there is nothing unique about a people searching for and creating ways to make their life better - all civilizations throughout history have done this. What is unique about us in America is the accelerated rate at which we continually search for novelty and progress.

I developed this guiding statement to stress on the fact that every good thing takes time to develop.

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.

Imagination is what has driven human progress since very early times.

Progress is the life-style of man.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

Mankind is still embryonic ... [man is] the bud from which something more complicated and more centered than man himself should emerge.

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.

The history of the human race is a continual struggle from darkness into light. It is, therefore, to no purpose to discuss the use of knowledge; man wants to know, and when he ceases to do so, is no longer a man.

Really good things take time to grow. Foundation is not built over night.

Hope puts up with modest gains, realizing that the longest journey starts with one step.

Civilization is not a burden. It is an opportunity.

It's a lot easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.

Humanity, like armies in the field, advances at the speed of the slowest.

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve.

Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection; but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.

The processes of growth are gradual, bearing fruit in a decade, not a day.

Sometimes we have to be patient because the one thing that is inevitable in life is evolution. Whether it comes at the pace that we are expecting it or not, it’s inevitable.

It takes time to get the whole package. Freshmen can't be seniors.

It is in the stomach of plants that development begins, and ends in the circles of the universe. 'Tis a long scale from the gorilla to the gentleman,--from the gorilla to Plato, Newton, Shakespeare,--to the sanctities of religion, the refinements of legislation, the summit of science, art, and poetry. The beginnings are slow and infirm, but it is an always accelerated march.

Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.