Dean Inge Quotes

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Men, like bullets, go farthest when they are smoothest.

The optimist underestimates how difficult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it's possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success.

I am totally fascinated by people and our history as I understand and continue to explore it. People have so much to give and so far to go and yet we have given and gone a great distance. It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

Unanimity of opinion is characteristic of savages and civilization only advances as more and more people have the right to call wrong what the majority calls right..

If there is no struggle there is no progress…. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by those who are doing it.

Suspicions too often block progress.

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.

Progress is man’s indifference to the lessons of history.

.. every advance in social progress removes us more and more from the guidance of instinct, obliging us to depend upon reason for the assurance that our habits are really agreeable to the laws of health.

The fact is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas--it sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system. -- With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature [us] will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do

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.

True progress consists in submitting the human element which corrupts liberty, to the divine element which purifies it. Society has followed a different path in looking upon the empire of faith as dead; and in proclaiming the empire of reason and the will of man.

Americans look foward to their posterity rather than backward to their ancestors.

People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

Because many advances have happened, we've lost the urgency (and that's just human nature) that we had before, when we couldn't vote, couldn't use mass transportation, or drink from the fountains.

No matter how many detours and adjustments it made, the caravan moved toward the same compass point. Once obstacles were overcome, it returned to its course, sighting on a star that indicated the location of the oasis.

Every gain made by individuals or societies is almost instantly taken for granted. The luminous ceiling toward which we raise our longing eyes becomes, when we have climbed to the next floor, a stretch of disregarded linoleum beneath our feet.

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 don't think there will ever be a time when people will stop wanting to bring about change.