Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Quotes

Mistakes are merely steps up the ladder.

The Lord is anxious to lead us to the safety of higher ground, away from the path of physical and spiritual danger. His upward path will require us to climb.

In the East, the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedoms. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.

Excelsior, higher and higher, but only step by step.

Whatever field of human activity one may take, only those trends that are in harmony with the needs of society show rapid progress.

We must work passionately and indefatigably to bridge the gulf between our scientific progress and our moral progress. One of the great problems of mankind is that we suffer from a poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually.

Growth is a greater mystery than death. All of us can understand failure, we all contain failure and death within us, but not even the successful man can begin to describe the impalpable elations and apprehensions of growth.

Christianity alone inspires and guides progress; for the progress of man is movement toward God. and movement toward God wili ensure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and adorns man.

When a school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranty of a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious

One reason why the progressive state is 'cheerful' is that social conflict is diminished by it.

So much has happened in the past five years, I can't speak for the next five. What I want is to continue to grow. Because I am never satisfied; I always want more. I always want to get better. I always want to climb another step.

Ethical religion affirms the continuity of progress toward moral perfection. It affirms that the spiritual development of the human race cannot be prematurely cut off, either gradually or suddenly; that every stone of offence against which we stumble is a stepping-stone to some greater good; that, at the end of days, if we choose to put it so, or, rather, in some sphere beyond the world of space and time, all the rays of progress will be summed and centred in a transcendent focus.

It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement.

Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

According to Jains the soul in pure form has infiniteness in terms of its knowledge and power. These faculties are obstructed for its exhibition due to Karmic bondage. As the soul progresses in its morality and spirituality it gets certain powers which may look miraculous.

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray

Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.

Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?

History is the record of human progress, a record of the struggle of the advancement of the human mind, of the human spirit, towards some known or unknown objective.

What's important is the tolerance. If people are not beating other people up, or shooting them for being different, then that's progress. Even if the ideas that go through their head are fodder for novelists.

Sincere biblical repentance is as much a work of grace as not sinning in the first place. To err is human, to make progress is divine.

We are all in motion. Always. Those who are not climbing toward something are descending toward nothing.

When I look at where I’ve been, I see that what I am becoming is a whole lot further down the road from where I was.

We haven't come a long way, we've come a short way. If we hadn't come a short way, no one would be calling us baby.