Quotes & Sayings About Personal Progress

Being asked to serve as UN Women's Goodwill Ambassador is truly humbling. The chance to make a real difference is not an opportunity that everyone is given and is one I have no intention of taking lightly. Women's rights are something so inextricably linked with who I am, so deeply personal and rooted in my life that I can't imagine an opportunity more exciting. I still have so much to learn, but as I progress I hope to bring more of my individual knowledge, experience and awareness to this role. — Emma Watson

The hell of human suffering, evil and oppression is paved with good intentions. The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all in their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions. — Robert Briffault

In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Those men and women are fortunate who are born at a time when a great struggle for human freedom is in progress. It is an added good fortune to have parents who take a personal part in the great movements of their time. I am glad and thankful that this was my case. — Emmeline Pankhurst

We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. — Robert Kennedy

The problem is not religion or God. The actual problem is authoritarianism, mixed with the desire to angrily impose one's personal apparently idealistic beliefs on others. — Abhijit Naskar

Mindfulness requires being a beginner. Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies of personal progress and change. Nobody benchpresses 100 kilos the first time they enter a gym. — Paul Gibbons

While you are busy eyeing the progress of others, you lose sight of your own opportunities. Handle your own business and get your personal affairs in order. Paying too much attention to someone else's blessings will ultimately cost you your own. — Carlos Wallace

Love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey. — Paulo Coelho

So you think the best way to prepare kids for the real world is to bus them to a government institution where they're forced to spend all day isolated with children of their own age and adults who are paid to be with them, placed in classes that are too big to allow more than a few minutes of personal interaction with the teacher-then spend probably an hour or more everyday waiting in lunch lines, car lines, bathroom lines, recess lines, classroom lines, and are forced to progress at the speed of the slowest child in class? — Steven James

And the Republican Party especially associates the market with the idea of progress, goodness, family, and points us toward the mall as an answer to all our personal dreams. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Every day His servants are dying modestly and peacefully
not a word of victory on their lips; but Christ's deep triumph in their hearts
watching the slow progress of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die, and the world hears nothing of them; and yet theirs was the completest victory. They came to the battle field, the field to which they had been looking forward all their lives, and the enemy was not to be found. There was no foe to fight with. — Frederick William Robertson

It's your duty to build your brand daily not in a day — Bernard Kelvin Clive

In all, Nigeria belongs to us all and we have a personal responsibility to see that it succeeds — Fela Durotoye

The whole story of human and personal progress is an unmitigated tale of denials today-denials of rest, denials or repose and comfort and ease and pleasure-that tomorrow may be richer. — James Carroll

Here was the astounding fact: the race did go forward; the race did achieve; and in every way the race grew better. Progress through irrational and astounding blunders, whose outrageousness bedwarfed the wildest cliches of romance, was what Kennaston found everywhere. All this, then, also was foreplanned, just as all happenings at Storisende had been, in his puny romance; and the puppets, here to, moved as they thought of their own volition, but really in order to serve a denouement in which many of them had not any personal part or interest ... — James Branch Cabell

As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body. — Marcel Proust

Success is steady progress toward one's personal goals. — Jim Rohn

Worry is the enemy of optimism and personal progress. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Most people in America, if not the world, would agree that every advance involves some sacrifice. In fact, a common sports adage proclaims: "No pain, no gain." In other words, progress is always accompanied by a certain amount of loss. This concept is illustrated throughout history, literature and personal experience. One compelling illustration that some bad always accompanies some good is demonstrated in the Civil Rights movement. In 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. Although she was arrested and jailed, her brave efforts inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott which — Tom Clements

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think. — Lee Kuan Yew

I believe that our ability to worship God, to reaffirm our covenants and receive the healing power of the Holy Ghost, to receive the instruction we need in order to make personal progress - all of these things are greatly affected by how secure and safe we feel in our Church environment during the three-hour block of time on Sundays. If we have to spend our energy dealing with feelings that we are not accepted, being concerned about our appearance, or worrying that what we do or say will be judged harshly, in other words that the fellowship of our ward members is anything but "fixed, immovable, and unchangeable", we certainly won't be able to make the kind of progress we could make otherwise. — Virginia H. Pearce

Should-haves are the devil's greatest tool against our personal progress. He shouts in our ears that they are failures, while God calmly whispers they are lessons. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Be wary of the praise of men; don't let it pump you up unnecessarily and don't let it paralyze your progress — Bernard Kelvin Clive

The effective Christians of history have been men and women of great personal discipline. The connection between the words disciple and discipline is obvious. To be a true, effective disciple of Christ we must seek to discipline our lives and endeavor to walk even as He walked. The thing that has hindered the progress of the church is not so much our talk and our creeds; but it has been our walk, our conduct, our daily living. We need a revival of Christian example, and that can only come when professed followers of Christ begin to practice Christian discipline. — Billy Graham

If the USA doesn't start learning how to put personal egos aside for the sustainability of a nation, then these "mighty" United States will be no better than the politically divided commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Where progress is slowed because each party thinks any idea from the other party must be stupid or without validity and Independence has become a distant dream squashed by corruption. I suggest politicians go back to kindergarten to learn the basics in decent humanity. The notions of sharing and respect obviously didn't stick the first time. — Cristina Marrero

Patients must be willing to give up their maladaptive coping styles in order to change. For example, patients who continue surrendering to the schema - by remaining in destructive relationships or by not setting limits in their personal or work lives -perpetuate the schema and are not able to make significant progress in therapy. — Jeffrey E. Young

You are here on earth for a divine purpose. It is not to be endlessly entertained or to be constantly in full pursuit of pleasure. You are here to be tried, to prove yourself so that you can receive the additional blessings God has for you ... some blessings will be delivered in this life; others will come beyond the veil. The Lord is intent on your personal growth and development. That progress is accelerated when you willingly allow Him to lead you through every growth experience you encounter, whether initially it be to your individual liking or not. — Richard G. Scott

I was interested in writing about gender in this future world where progress has not only halted but turned backward. On another note, sometimes the personal is not so politically correct, and what we are turned on by can't be made to behave. — Edan Lepucki

It takes definitive action to see positive gains. — Michael Hyatt

Personal growth is about progress, not perfection. — Hal Elrod

As you evolve, the friends and lovers you attract will be of a higher caliber. Embrace that fact and do not be afraid to leave old relations behind if they cease to be compatible with you. — Shane Eric Mathias

Although the making of a religion of one's own can be satisfying, it can progress further and faster with the aid of the spiritual traditions. Your own spiritual path risks being too personal and limited. What resources do you have compared to the traditions that have thought of things you will never consider? They have refined ideas and images and teachings and moral guidelines expressed in elegant and inspiring ways. They have produced spiritual beauty of a kind no single person could ever create. Read Emerson's journals and you find that he was reading Hafiz for months, and Thoreau's homespun spiritual insights come wrapped in references from the Western and Eastern traditions. — Thomas Moore

I officially give myself permission to be a work in progress. I do not have to be perfect to have absolute value. I am a student in the classroom of life and I am right on track in my personal process of becoming. — Kimberly Giles

Love of country cannot be a supersized version of individual narcissism. True love of country-of this country-is love of our children, of a creed that promises them a better life before it promises us anything, and embraces the sacrifices needed to make that better life. True love of country is giving ourselves to a cause and a purpose larger than ourselves. And that cause is to make liberty worth having, to make the pursuit of happiness deeper than the quest for personal pleasure, and to leave a legacy of progress and possibility. — Eric Liu

We are perhaps too near the age of transition to see clearly the interplay of all that made for progress. Each of us has had his own peculiar training, his own personal contact with the mighty ones of the immediate past; and this forms as it were a telescopic tube determining limits to our field of vision. No doubt we may range the whole horizon; but after all we look from our own point of vantage. — Cargill Gilston Knott

The excellence and efficiency of any nation or of our global community at large is driven by the collective empowerment of individuals. Gross consumer waste, haphazard bureaucratic spending, and the careless consumption of natural resources are all reflections of the mismanagement of personal power common within the average citizen. — Scott Edmund Miller

We live in time, it bounds us and defines us, and time is supposed to measure history, isn't it? But if we can't understand time, can't grasp its mysteries of pace and progress, what chance do we have with history
even our own small, personal, largely undocumented piece of it? — Julian Barnes

The world is your canvas and your teacher.Take a day to reflect, measure and adjust on your goals; progress is essential to continued success. — Bob Proctor

If you are training properly, you should progress steadily. This doesn't necessarily mean a personal best every time you race ... Each training session should be like putting money in the bank. If your training works, you continue to deposit into your 'strength' account ... Too much training has the opposite effect. Rather than build, it tears down. Your body will tell when you have begun to tip the balance. Just be sure to listen to it. — Grete Waitz

The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exist as an independent cause of natural events.
To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with the natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.
For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress.
- Science and Religion (1941) — Albert Einstein

When we encourage others
With no personal motives,
We raise high, very high,
Humanity's progress-standard. — Sri Chinmoy

I was also troubled by the apparent over-confidence of a generation that has only known stability, growth and prosperity. I thought our people should understand how vulnerable Singapore was and is, the dangers that beset us, and how we nearly did not make it. Most of all, I hope that they will know that honest and effective government, public order and personal security, economic and social progress did not come about as the natural course of events. — Lee Kuan Yew

Whatever the composition of a firm, if it is to do good business it should be a place where everyone is encouraged to progress toward complexity- or at the very least a place that does not make it more difficult to achieve personal growth. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

At the very time when we have been boasting of our enlightenment and knowledge and understanding, there is this tragic breakdown in personal relationships ... For instance, we now have to have Marriage Guidance classes. Up to this century men and women were married without this expert advice which now seems to be so essential. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Your personal development is your personal responsibility. No one can study or acquire knowledge for you. There are things only you can do, to bring the change or the results you require to make progress in life. — Archibald Marwizi

I think personal diplomacy has caused a lot of mischief and harm, and has impeded the progress of peace in the world. It leads to a very great fallacy - the almost pathetic belief of some Foreign Ministers - that, if they had lunch with someone and called him by his Christian name, they have changed the fundamental facts of relationship between nations. — Paul Hasluck

Man is appealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at best tribal, but by his perception of his oneness with each human being. In the practice of mutual aid, which we can re-trace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support- not mutual struggle- has had the leading part. — Peter Kropotkin

Progress is personal; it comes from individuals demanding more of themselves and everyone else. — Richard Koch

Handel's yearning for independence from the traditional chains of patronage and his persistence in monitoring his productions resulted with unique developments concerning Baroque 'opera seria'; however, paradoxically his personal obsession to obtain complete artistic freedom generated disastrous side-effects that eventually impeded the progress of opera in London. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Don't tell me you're not good at something. People will always be better and worse than you at everything you do. Tell me whether or not you are making progress. If you are progressing, are you measuring your progress? If you are not progressing, why not? Get to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Develop your own personal progress plan and determine how you could improve and progress from where you are. You most likely don't know how far you have come and how much you truly have accomplished. Improve and progress! — Jerald Simon

There is another, more sinister consequence of affirmative action: the carefully engineered appearance of great racial progress strengthens the "colorblind" public consensus that personal and cultural traits, not structural arrangements, are largely responsible for the fact that the majority of young black men in urban areas across the United States are currently under the control of the criminal justice system or branded as felons for life. In — Michelle Alexander

I believe we must pursue mastery for who we become along the way in its achievement. When we progress in Jiu Jitsu, that newfound experience and wisdom transcends into all areas of our lives. We use Jiu Jitsu as the vehicle for growth, but that growth radiates over all of human activity. Someone who devotes time and energy in learning this skill is learning far more than how to subdue an opponent. The student learns persistence, perseverance, pattern recognition, problem solving, and most importantly, learning how to learn. In the arena of life, these virtues are far more valuable than any guard pass. — Chris Matakas

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger's or Whitehead's best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of "obligatory passage point" (Latour's term) in the discussions that follow.
Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made "fewer mistakes" than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress. — Graham Harman

A basic framework for happiness:

- Time spent daily, hopefully in a job that challenges us, but also in our after-hours hobbies.

- An ability to show ourselves that we are making consistent progress and improvements toward a specified goal.

- Energy and attention dedicated each day to an activity that puts us in the zone. — Steve Kamb

I must have the personal dialogue, the private time, with each painting in progress. I can't share it with anyone until it's done. — Ken Danby

Becoming a little child meant becoming aware that all is gift, that I am helpless and powerless to add a single inch to my spiritual stature. Without the subjective awareness of utter dependence, the personal consciousness of a dynamism outside of self at work in us, I seriously question whether anyone has made real progress in the spiritual life. — Brennan Manning

The accumulation of beliefs, knowledge and experiences contribute to our level of success and progress in life, however they also introduce the reality that we are all prejudiced. If not well managed, our personal prejudices can become the mental prison we lock ourselves inside or we use to shut others out. You need to deal with this likely impediment to a success-driven lifestyle. — Archibald Marwizi

The progress of science is tremendously disorderly, and the motivations that lead to this progress are tremendously varied, and the reasons why scientists go into science, the personal motivations, are tremendously varied. I have said ... that science is a haven for freaks, that people go into science because they are misfits, and that it is a sheltered place where they can spin their own yarn and have recognition, be tolerated and happy, and have approval for it. — Max Delbruck

Self-reflection enables every person to alter the trajectory of their personal storyline by reviewing a series of episodic occurrences and making value judgments regarding the past. How we perceive our history colors the present, our deeds of today script the future outcome of individual persons, and the outcome of many people making conscious decisions using their cognitive processes including the ability to remember and share memories influences the direction of human development and the progress of society. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In discovery- driven planning, learning is the essential unit of progress. A course correction isn't equivalent to failure, it's an opportunity to re-calibrate so you can move more quickly up the learning curve. — Whitney Johnson

While our institutional mission and destiny are not in doubt, how we each participate and understand our individual responsibilities requires constant attention, effort, and vigilance. BYU will progress and prosper, but our individual success is not guaranteed without our own personal best efforts and worthily received blessings. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Motive lies behind action. It is the root of behaviour and attitude, the fuel we need to progress from desire to achievement. In our humanity we are driven to survive, and to be loved makes the living worthwhile. — Sarah Tun

The speed at which progress rolls is not determined by the number of people who started pushing it, but by the number of people who are passionate to hold on doing so. — Israelmore Ayivor

When employees are working to attain passion and progress in every area of life, the are less likely to be cynical or apathetic. — Michael Hyatt

Personal growth is not like the development of a skill. It does not take place in observable increments that can be measured and charted. Indeed, as we have seen, when we're growing in sensitivity, generosity, and compassion, we're not aware of it, because we're not focusing on ourselves. The recovery of emotional freedom simply does not have the quality, for most of us, of a controllable sequence of transformations. It's more a career of discovering futher and further weaknesses and shedding them in turn. — C. Terry Warner

Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy. — August Strindberg

The Carousel of Progress was a physical representation of Walt's personal philosophy that people, despite their foibles, were basically decent, and that life was good in any era and would only keep getting better. — Jim Korkis

The Incarnation, which is for traditional Christianity synonymous with the historical birth and earthly life of Christ, is for mystics of a certain type, not only this but also a perpetual Cosmic and personal process. It is an everlasting bringing forth, in the universe and also in the individual ascending soul, of the divine and perfect Life, the pure character of God, of which the one historical life dramatized the essential constituents. Hence the soul, like the physical embryo, resumes in its upward progress the spiritual life-history of the race. "The one secret, the greatest of all," says Patmore, is "the doctrine of the Incarnation, regarded not as an historical event which occurred two thousand years ago, but as an event which is renewed in the body of every one who is in the way to the fulfilment of his original destiny." 239 — Evelyn Underhill

Progress in the Christian life is exactly equal to the growing knowledge we gain of the Triune God in personal experience. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery. — Peter Kropotkin

This magical thinking, this idea that human and personal progress is somehow inevitable, leads to political passivity. ... It has turned whole nations, such as the United States, into self-consuming machines of death. — Chris Hedges

Lucid dreaming has considerable potential for promoting personal growth and self-development, enhancing self-confidence, improving mental and physical health, facilitating creative problem solving and helping you to progress on the path to self-mastery. — Stephen LaBerge

Woman has so long been subject to the disabilities and restrictions with which her progress has been embarrassed that she has become enervated, her mind to some extent paralyzed; and like those still more degraded by personal bondage she hugs her chains. — Lucretia Mott

See yourself as a long-term work in progress, not a short-term project of preservation. — Oli Anderson

If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible. — Boris Sidis

Leaders are lovers of change. Without change, growth is static. To lead, you have to appreciate change; else change will depreciate you! — Israelmore Ayivor

However, in order to make progress in anything, we must make the first move - from then on, our personal rhythm and intuition will show us how to conserve his energy. — Paulo Coelho

We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests. — Sheryl Sandberg

Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. — Peter Joseph

Be on the right way and go in the right direction. Once you are never going back, you will progress day after day, little by little. — Israelmore Ayivor

Never fight any progressive moves unless you can move faster to achieve something different. — Ferdinard S. Lawson

128. We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. — Pope Francis

Never deviate from the right way and you will improve. — Israelmore Ayivor

In pursuing personal growth, there are issues where we can advance just so far by ourselves. At some point, our continued progress and improvement can only come about through relationships with others. Romantic love is an intense and intimate exposure to another person; if we can be who we want to be, even in that context, then our spiritual growth is exponentially expanded. — Marianne Williamson

To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot. But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. — Albert Einstein

But the best managers have the solution: Ask. Ask your employee about her goals: What are you shooting for in your current role? Where do you see your career heading? What personal goals would you feel comfortable sharing with me? How often do you want to meet to talk about your progress? — Marcus Buckingham