progressive understanding Quotes

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.

The important thing is not to know more than all men, but to know more at each moment than any particular man.

So, little by little, time brings out each several thing into view, and reason raises it up into the shores of light.

Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid.

Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.

Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.

God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.

It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached. It is because we do not yet know which of the many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we wait until it has gained sufficient support.

People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.

What seems today inconceivable will appear one day, from a higher stand point, quite simple and harmonious.

Enlightenment must come little by little - otherwise it would overwhelm.

We must not think, "Well, we have all the truth, we understand the main pillars of our faith, and we may rest on this knowledge." The truth is an advancing truth, and we must walk in the increasing light.

Though we must never think to learn above our Bible, as long as we are here in this world, yet we must still be getting forward in it.

[Science is] piecemeal revelation.

One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth.