Human Advancement Quotes & Sayings

When one is giving service for the advancement of humanity, when one is working without money and without price, with no hope of earthly reward, there comes a real, genuine joy into the human heart. — Heber J. Grant

Given as much law as that man will be able to do anything and go anywhere, an the only trace of pessimism left in the human prospect today is a faint flavour that one was born so soon. — H.G.Wells

The 'stream' we call science always flows forward; sometimes reactionary beavers block its flow, but the stream is never defeated by this; it accumulates, gathers strength; its waters get over the barrage and continue on their course. The advancement of science is the advancement of God, for science is nothing but human intelligence, and human intelligence is the most valuable treasure God has bequeathed us. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

All of us want to be better. Human nature is always seeking advancement. — Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey

A fast food job, for most people, should be an entry level position. If you see no path for advancement beyond that, it's time to take a real fast look at your human capital and learn a skill that will make you more money. — William J. Bernstein

We don't know the spiritual advancements long-term veganism - over generations - would have for human life. It would be certainly a different civilisation, and the first one in the whole of our history that would truly deserve the title of being a civilisation. — Donald Watson

There are times when the marvels of scientific advancement expedite our processes, making our lives easier. Modern technology provides machines that can think three or five or seven steps ahead of the human mind, machines that offer elegant solutions, a selection of contingency plans, Bs and Cs and Ds in case A isn't to your liking.
And then there are times when a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease are all that's necessary to get the job done. — Victoria Schwab

Henrietta's were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory. — Rebecca Skloot

A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. — Jimmy Reid

Intelligent assistance involves leveraging artificial intelligence to enable the government, individual companies, and the nonprofit social sector to develop more sophisticated online and mobile platforms that can empower every worker to engage in lifelong learning on their own time, and to have their learning recognized and rewarded with advancement. Intelligent assistants arise when we use artificial intelligence to improve the interfaces between humans and their tools with software, so humans can not only learn faster but also act faster and act smarter. Lastly, we need to deploy AI to create more intelligent algorithms, or what Reid Hoffman calls "human networks" - so that we can much more efficiently connect people to all the job opportunities that exist, all the skills needed for each job, and all the educational opportunities to acquire those skills cheaply and easily. — Thomas L. Friedman

As was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained. — Charles Frazier

Religion is now the first obstacle to women's advancement. Religion pulls human beings backwards, it goes against science and progressiveness. Religion engulfs people with a fear of the supernatural. It bars people from laughing and never allows people to exercise their choice. — Taslima Nasrin

We may live in concrete nests piled on top of each other, we may file in and out of our planes and freeways in neat lines, but we are making it all up as we go along. An ant is born into a complex chemical environment where every small instruction had been laid down in advance. Mother tells the workers what to do and they do everything for the greater good of their enormous family.
In contrast, every human being is capable of working for the advancement of their own procreating, their own minuscule families. Yet we somehow recognize the value of a larger form of society, and readily respond to a larger world beyond our own narrow self-interests. With our unique creative capacity, we have modified ourselves as we have modified our physical conditions, and we have developed an extraordinary division of labor. You and I may be as different as night and day, but that is our strength, and it is precisely this diversification that makes my time in Africa so intensely satisfying. — Craig Packer

I've tried to imagine how she'd feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I'm pretty sure that she - like most of us - would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body. — Rebecca Skloot

And yet this does not touch the kernel of the problem. Human advancement is not a mere question of almsgiving, but rather of sympathy and cooperation among classes who would scorn charity. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Ever so often in the history of human endeavour, there comes a breakthrough that takes humankind across a frontier into a new era ... today's announcement is such a breakthrough, a breakthrough that opens the way for massive advancement in the treatment of cancer and hereditary diseases. And that is only the beginning. — Tony Blair

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. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Scientific advancement should aim to affirm and to improve human life. — Nathan Deal

Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so that in time the song became a different thing from what it had been, barely recognizable in either tune or lyric. But you could not say the song had been improved, for as was true of all human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. — Charles Frazier

Yet when his classmates put their blades to a colored cadaver, they did more for the cause of colored advancement than the most high-minded abolitionist. In death the negro became a human being. Only then was he the white man's equal. — Colson Whitehead

Despite every advancement, language remains the defining nexus of our humanity; it is where our knowledge and hope lie. It is the precondition of human tenderness, mightier than the sword but also infinitely more subtle and ultimately more urgent. — Andrew Solomon

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement. — John Stuart Mill

Distributed intelligence is the key to the advancement of human civilization. Dictatorships, communist countries, monarchies in the past all eventually collapsed because of their inefficiency in moving information. — Al Gore

Every advancement in human history, every scientific discovery, every artistic masterpiece, every new idea has come from an individual looking at the world in a new way. Thinking outside the box. So tell me, Samantha, why are you trying so hard to put yourself inside the box? — Kate Scott

Contemporary medical technology is not an advancement in medicine- it indicates the failure of Caucasian medical science and is a sign of ignorance. Technology cannot replace the human ability to diagnose disease by looking, touching and smelling to perform treatments without drugs. — Llaila Afrika

Curiosity is the fuel that powers the engine of human advancement — Keigo Higashino

Water is a finite resource that is essential in the advancement of agriculture, and is vital to human life. — Jim Costa

Our return to an image-based culture means the destruction of the abstract thought made possible by a literate, print-based society. Image-based societies do not grasp or cope with ambiguity, nuance, doubt and the many layers of irrational motives and urges, some of them frightening, that make human actions complex and finally unfathomable. They eschew self-criticism for amusement. They build fantastic non-reality-based belief systems that cater to human desires and illusions rather than human reality. These illusions, whether religious or secular, offer a simple and unexamined myth that the human race is advancing morally, spiritually and materially toward paradise. This advance is proclaimed as inevitable. This faith in our advancement makes us passive and complacent. — Chris Hedges

The perpetual obstacle to human advancement is custom. — John Stuart Mill

Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement. — Henry Ward Beecher

The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress. — J. William Fulbright

It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared, which quite dispensed with respect for elders and attached no importance to mutual respect as human beings. From the way of Go the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art. The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice ... — Yasunari Kawabata

Science discovered long ago that carbon is a source of life. The ashes of my faith have prepared the ground for the planting of seeds that have produced new forms of truth, morality and meaning on my own terms, not according to the dogma laid down by religious ruffians or a vengeful God. If, as believers claim, the word "gospel" means good news, then the good news for me is that there is no gospel, other than what I can define for myself, by observation and conscience. As a journalist and free-thinking human being, I have come not to favor and fear religion, but to face and fight it as an impediment to civilized advancement. — Steve Benson

Entire industries and some of our very largest professions depend on the persistence of our current system. Other social institutions - like giant publishers and test-prep companies - are synched to its workings. A certain teaching method implies certain goals and certain tests. The tests, in turn, have a serious impact on hiring practices and career advancement. Human nature being what it is, those who prosper under a given system tend to become supporters of that system. Thus the powerful tend to have a bias toward the status quo; our educational customs tend to perpetuate themselves, and because they interconnect with so many other aspects of our culture, they are extraordinarily difficult to change. — Salman Khan

How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? — John Maynard Keynes

This particular type of road was a motorway. A motorway is the most advanced type of road there is, which as with most forms of human advancement essentially meant accidental death was considerably more probable. — Matt Haig

The arts and sciences, in general, during the three or four last centuries, have had a regular course of progressive improvement. The inventions in mechanic arts, the discoveries in natural philosophy, navigation and commerce, and the advancement of civilization and humanity, have occasioned changes in the condition of the world and the human character which would have astonished the most refined nations of antiquity. A continuation of similar exertions is everyday rendering Europe more and more like one community, or single family. — John Adams

Since we human beings are the cause of the environmental problems that we face today, we can also be the solution. We just need a shift in our thinking. We just need to move away from the paradigm of competition and domination. Then this world will not end. In fact, the world will prosper and return to its original place as the cradle of self-discovery and the advancement of human spirituality. And such a world is a true democracy. — Seung Heun Lee

It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit. — Samuel Johnson

Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are in my opinion not philosophers; for they lack the first requirement of a philosopher, namely a seriousness and honesty of inquiry. They are merely sophists who wanted to appear to be rather than to be something. They sought not truth, but their own interest and advancement in the world. Appointments from governments, fees and royalties from students and publishers, and, as a means to this end, the greatest possible show and sensation in their sham philosophy-such were
the guiding stars and inspiring genii of those disciples of wisdom. And so they have not passed the entrance examination and cannot be admitted into the venerable company of thinkers for the human race.
Nevertheless they have excelled in one thing, in the art of beguiling the public and of passing themselves off for what they are not; and this undoubtedly requires talent, yet not philosophical. — Arthur Schopenhauer

In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed. — Margaret Thatcher

Secular humanists should recognize those forms of religion as allies in the struggle for human advancement. They should also learn from them, as they try to build a fully secular world in which people can have the opportunity to live rich and fulfilling lives. — Philip Kitcher

We've now become the spectators of our own mutation.
We may not die human anymore.
But what makes us human? — Natasha Tsakos

The humans are an arrogant species, defined by violence and greed. They have taken their home planet, the only one they currently have access to, and placed it on the road to destruction. They have created a world of divisions and categories and have continually failed to see the similarities between themselves. They have developed technology at a rate too fast for human psychology to keep up with, and yet they still pursue advancement for advancement's sake, and for the pursuit of the money and fame they all crave so much. — Matt Haig

Coercive power is the curse of the universe, coactive power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul. — Mary Parker Follett

All experiences of life seems to prove that the impediments thrown in the way of the human advancement may for the most part be overcome by steady good conduct, honest zeal, activity, perseverance and above all, by a determined resolution to surmount. — Samuel Smiles

MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. — Ambrose Bierce

Musicians add to songs and they evolve: For as was true of human effort, there was never advancement. Everything added meant something lost, and about as often as not the thing lost was preferable to the thing gained, so that over time we'd be lucky if we just broke even. Any thought otherwise was empty pride. p. 380 — Charles Frazier

Feminism is a tremendously underestimated force, viewed in the present context primarily as a woman's concern. The understanding has not yet percolated throughout society that the advancement of women is a program vitally connected to the survival of human beings as a species. The reason for this is simply that institutions take on the character of the atoms which compose them, and what we are most menaced by in the twentieth century are dehumanized institutions. If women played a major role in policy formation and execution on the part of these institutions, I think they would have a far more benign and ecologically sensitive kind of character. So I see feminism not as a kind of war between the sexes or any of these stereotypic images, but as actually a kind of effort to shift the ratios of our emphasis that is expressed through our institutions. — Terence McKenna

In the age of arms, a super warhead might be the most powerful for its destructiveness. In the age of farms, an irrigation system is most powerful, for it feeds lives. But how do you define power and advancement in the age of social engineering? It is the one that mimics human the best, isn't it? We don't need a warhead when there has been a drought. We don't point at our enemy with sprinklers. It is about evolving. (Douglas Parsley) — Alan Chains

The barometer for judging the character of people, in regard human rights, is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian. The judgment as to whether you can trust the future, the social advancement - depending on people - will be judged on where they come out on that question. — Bayard Rustin

Now is the time to take up the cause of the advancement of human rights for all and the moment is yours to grasp. — Romeo Dallaire

The principal hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom of God is greed. It is the chief obstacle to heaven-sent revival. It seems that when the back of greed is broken, the human spirit soars into regions of unselfishness. I believe that it is safe to say there can be no continuous revival without 'hilarious' giving. And I fear no contradiction: wherever there is 'hilarious' giving there will soon be revival! — O. S. Hawkins

Every significant human project gets perverted for the
advancement of some individual or group. It seems impossible to get rational
direction for more than a few moments, and then that direction is lost. And yet, here
you are. What we did not understand is that humans have an uncanny gift for
invention, imagination, and cleverness. No other sentients are quite so gifted. You
also show altruistic charity in times of crisis. — Kenn Brody

He United States is subject to the scrutiny of a candid world ... what the United States does, for good or for ill, continues to be watched by the international community, in particular by organizations concerned with the advancement of the rule of law and respect for human dignity. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Social media are a catalyst for the advancement of everyone's rights. It's where we're reminded that we're all human and all equal. It's where people can find and fight for a cause, global or local, popular or specialized, even when there are hundreds of miles between them. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

The business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancement, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing. — George Eliot

Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry to survive, Your Honor. Besides the advancement of truth, science and morality in general, the freedom of the press is a backbone of democracy. It exists to keep the government transparent, and the human instruments of government honest. — Kenneth Eade

Inside a firm, people become obsessed with their competitors for career advancement. Then the firms themselves become obsessed with their competitors in the marketplace. Amid all the human drama, people lose sight of what matters and focus on their rivals instead. — Peter Thiel

But in all times men have been prone to believe that their happiness and well-being were to be secured by means of institutions rather than by their own conduct. Hence the value of legislation as an agent in human advancement has always been greatly over-estimated — Anonymous

When all material advancements utilized in spiritual need that is the real advancement of human civilization. — Bhakti Charu Swami

The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy. — Akbar Ganji

So on this Human Rights Day, let us rededicate ourselves to the advancement of human rights and freedoms for all, and pledge always to live by the ideals we promote to the world. — Barack Obama

Had the advancement of medicine, then, done nothing more than to expose, subdivide, and further complicate the problems faced by the human species? — Haruki Murakami