Progressively Quotes & Sayings

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

If men were to colonize the moon or Mars - even with abundant supplies of oxygen, water, and food, as well as adequate protection against heat, cold, and radiation - they would not long retain their humanness, because they would be deprived of those stimuli which only Earth can provide. Similarly, we shall progressively lose our humanness even on Earth if we continue to pour filth into the atmosphere; to befoul soil, lakes, and rivers; to disfigure landscapes with junkpiles; to destroy wild plants and animals that do not contribute to monetary values; and thus transform the globe into an environment alien to our evolutionary past. The quality of human life is inextricably interwoven with the kinds and variety of stimuli man receives from the Earth and the life it harbors, because human nature is shaped biologically and mentally by external nature. (Rene Dubos qtd. in Kaltreider) — Kurt Kaltreider

If God were to exist for the entire humanity, he would be profoundly vile, as he allows the existence of unfathomable sin, stupidity, madness, and misery for no reason than his own despicable enjoyment. God exists though, not for all humanity, but for a one chosen man - a philosopher - who is bound to answer the greatest philosophical question, the question about the nature of the questioner's existence, which progressively quenches the divine vanity. — Kedar Joshi

As the Western world has invested every aspect of its waking life with visual order, with procedures and spaces that are uniform, continuous and connected, it has progressively alienated itself from needful involvement in its subconscious life. — Marshall McLuhan

Love is revealed progressively. — Mensah Oteh

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them. — Aleister Crowley

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships. — Stephen Covey

We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder. — Kallistos Ware

The world is a
progressively realized community of interpretation. — Josiah Royce

The oil industry is a stunning example of how science, technology, and mass production can divert an entire group of companies from their main task ... No oil company gets as excited about the customers in its own backyard as about the oil in the Sahara Desert ... But the truth is, it seems to me, that the industry begins with the needs of the customer for its products. From that primal position its definition moves steadily back stream to areas of progressively lesser importance until it finally comes to rest at the search for oil. — Theodore Levitt

Doing the same things you did when the economy was good is not good enough. You will have to put more coals on the fire in a poor economy to get the same heat you received in a good economy. You must give more energy, more thought, more service, and get into positive thinking material more frequently. Become more selective about who you spend time with. Love a little more, hate a little less. Think about it. You can progressively move on an upward path toward any goal. The choice is yours as to who or what controls you! — Bob Proctor

The work of redemption is applied to individuals definitively (in justification), progressively (in sanctification), and completely (in glorification). In the same way, the work of redemption is applied universally to the kingdom definitively (in its inauguration), progressively (in its expansion), and completely (in its consummation). — Keith A. Mathison

I want a long career in music, so you've gotta keep trying things out; it's gotta get progressively better. — Gin Wigmore

Marriage, like money, is still with us; and, like money, progressively devalued. — Robert Graves

I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.
Scout — Harper Lee

I just decided that I wasn't going to gain anything by going to school, since we couldn't afford it anyway, so I left school very early and went to work and progressively did things. — Kerry Stokes

Whether I'm critically well received, whether or not I sell books - of course it becomes progressively harder to get them published - nevertheless, it's what I do, every day. — Tama Janowitz

The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events. — Emma Goldman

I'm satisfied. I am progressively making my life and my name in the surest and purest manner. If I catch on in the theater, as I think I will, all the doors will gladly open wide for me. — Federico Garcia Lorca

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. - Thomas Carruthers — Daniel Coyle

A bridge-like CIO has the mind to think via the multidimensional lens, the gut to innovate fearlessly; the strategy to lead wisely and the skill to move progressively. — Pearl Zhu

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in us whereby our inner being is progressively changed, freeing us more and more from sinful traits and developing within us over time the virtues of Christlike character. — Jerry Bridges

Painting, by its nature, cannot provide an object of simultaneous collective reception ... as film is able to do today ... And while efforts have been made to present paintings to the masses in galleries and salons, this mode of reception gives the masses no means of organizing and regulating their response. Thus, the same public which reacts progressively to a slapstick comedy inevitably displays a backward attitude toward Surrealism. — Walter Benjamin

If you look at my career, I kind of got progressively better and better and better. I came closer to the top. — Tyler Hamilton

Seeing the world anew, as if it were new, is as old as writing. It's what all painters are trying to do, to see what's there, to see it in a way that renews it. It becomes more and more urgent as the planet gets worn flat and forest after forest is slain to print the paper for people's impressions to be scrawled down on. It becomes harder and harder to be original, to see things with an innocent eye. Innocence is much tied up with it. As the planet gets progressively less innocent, you need a more innocent eye to see it. — Martin Amis

The guiding light of investment contrarianism is not that the majority view-the conventional, or
received, wisdom-is always wrong. Rather, it's that majority opinion tends to solidify into a dogma while its basic premises begin to lose their original validity and so become progressively more mispriced in the marketplace. — Martin J. Pring

Not surprisingly, the federal judiciary nearly always rules in favor of the federal government. Judicial review, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, has hardly restrained Congress at all. Instead it has progressively stripped the states of their traditional powers, while allowing federal power to grow unchecked. — Joseph Sobran

So those who wished for some central cosmic purpose for us, or at least our world, or at least our solar system, or at least our galaxy, have been disappointed, progressively disappointed. The universe is not responsive to our ambitious expectations. — Carl Sagan

Exporting Church employees to Latin America masks a universal and unconscious fear of a new Church. North and South American authorities, differently motivated but equally fearful, become accomplices in maintaining a clerical and irrelevant Church. Sacralizing employees and property, this Church becomes progressively more blind to the possibilities of Sacralizing person and community. — Ivan Illich

Over the course of time many Americans have forgotten that "we the people" are actually at the top of the food chain as far as authority is concerned in this nation. The Republicans don't run our nation. The Democrats don't run our nation. We do. However, by dividing and engaging in political squabbles, we have allowed the government to grow so large and powerful that it has now become the boss, progressively taking charge of all of our lives. — Ben Carson

Progressively thinking biologists, both in our country and abroad, saw in Darwinism the only right road to the further development of scientific biology. — Trofim Lysenko

Contrology (Pilates) is complete coordination of body, mind, and spirit. Through Contrology you first purposefully acquire complete control of your own body and then through proper repetition of its exercises you gradually and progressively acquire that natural rhythm and coordination associated with all your subconscious activities. — Joseph Pilates

Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years. — Julian Simon

The way the floors of the library became progressively less social as you worked your way up. The first floor was a meat market. The top was monkish. — Sloane Crosley

The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading. — Norman Rush

Movements never quite exist, they are passages, intermediaries between two existences, moments of weakness, I expected to see them come out of nothingness, progressively ripen, blossom: I was finally going to surprise beings in the process of being born. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I find Jesse Jackson to be religiously, progressively old fashioned. — Jackie Jackson

Doesn't every generation feel like the one that's coming up behind them doesn't know how to grow up? I'm not sure if we're progressively getting worse or if your perspective shifts. — Jason Reitman

ALS is, in my opinion, the cruelest disease. At least with cancer, there's a glimmer of hope. You can come up with a game plan and you can fight. ALS is terminal. In all cases. Nobody has ever beaten ALS. I don't say this to be callous or melodramatic; indeed, I saw its effects up close. Worst of all, it affects only the body, so as people become progressively and inevitably more paralyzed, they are keenly aware of everything that is happening to them. Think about that: You are 100 percent aware of your own paralysis. The — Bryan Bishop

The SEC has actually progressively loosened up the rules and recognized the value of social media, but the goal is always going to be to get information out as broadly as possible as quickly as possible. — Mary Schapiro

And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests
disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware. — David Sedaris

If, over time, patients don't go to some services, then progressively they become less viable, so you do arrive at a point where the conclusion is: 'These are the right services for the future, and this is capacity we don't need.' — Andrew Lansley

If one of you has seriously sinned, repent - now. It is not good to violate the commandments of the Lord. It is worse to do nothing about it. Sin is like cancer in the body. It will never heal itself. It will become progressively worse unless cured through the medicine of repentance. — Richard G. Scott

Success is a way of life, which progressively expands your joyfulness, happiness, and fulfillment. — Debasish Mridha

This interesting subject, which, if the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, is to be the chief instrument in effecting it. — Thomas Jefferson

I think that we must come together progressively, with the British, the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians and with the new members of the European Union, we must make an effort to forge closer links. — Jean-Pierre Raffarin

Even as my family fell apart and things were at their most hopeless, my dad and I found a lot of happiness in the wilderness - sleeping on the cold gravel and killing as many things as we could get our hands on. Even as my mom got progressively more crazy, we found a happiness, in flashes. — Leigh Newman

First Law
In every animal which has not passed the limit of its development, a more frequent and continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ, and gives it a power proportional to the length of time it has been so used; while the permanent disuse of any organ imperceptibly weakens and deteriorates it, and progressively diminishes its functional capacity, until it finally disappears.
Second Law
All the acquisitions or losses wrought by nature on individuals, through the influence of the environment in which their race has long been placed, and hence through the influence of the predominant use or permanent disuse of any organ; all these are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise, provided that the acquired modifications are common to both sexes, or at least to the individuals which produce the young. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

One thing a goal must do is fill us with positive emotion when we think about it. The more intensely we feel about a goal the more progressively we'll move toward it. — Earl Nightingale

I also believe that man's continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people ... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment - unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight - that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues. — Garth Stein

To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply. — Charles Baudelaire

Let us ask ... how things work at the level of on-going subjugation, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviors, etc ... we should try to discover how it is that subjects are gradually, progressively, really and materially constituted through a multiplicity of organisms, forces, energies, materials, desires, thoughts, etc. We should try to grasp subjection in its material instance as a constitution of subjects. — Michel Foucault

For me, literature is the daughter of music: a bit heavy and more level headed than its mother. Literature submits to the same principles of successive perception, which allows it to build progressively. — Dumitru Tepeneag

In the practice of mindfulness, the ego's usual insistence on control and security is deliberately and progressively undermined. This is accomplished by steadily shifting one's center of gravity from the thinking mind to a neutral object like the breath, or in the case of my workshop, the random sounds of the environment. — Mark Epstein

Intensity is a mental attitude more than a physical attitude. Many people misunderstand what intensity means. They think it means straining and sweating. No! That is a wrong meaning of the word! Intensity is to get totally involved, fully immersed and absorbed in what one is doing. Intense practice means a fast and keen mode in adjusting, correcting, and progressively proceeding. — B.K.S. Iyengar

But as soon as I had finished my course of study, at which time it is usual to be admitted to the ranks of the well educated, I completely changed my opinion, for I found myself bogged down in so many doubts and errors, that it seemed to me that having set out to become learned, I had derived no benefit from my studies, other than that of progressively revealing to myself how ignorant I was. — Rene Descartes

Which country is real, mine or the teacher's? My wish is that we might progressively lose our confidence in what we think we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered. — Antoni Tapies

As we begin to internalize the technological kingdoms we have built,
as we progressively become more superhuman, what will differentiate us from machinery? — Natasha Tsakos

Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical [of Pius IX], new knowledge has led to the recognition in the theory of evolution of more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. — Pope John Paul II

I don't view myself from the past present or future tense i like to think of the world from my own personal point of view at whatever time i feel that is relayed to me in conjunction with my well being to progressively grow successfully finacially as well as mentally. — Riff Raff

I was doing progressively smaller movies in England, after Harry Potter ... to the point where I was doing nine-day shoots for, like, 20p and a packet of Space Invaders. And then this happened. So I'm not just another actor who's around and jobbing. When you hire me for a job, you're hiring. — Robert Pattinson

When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

One trouble with growing old is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure, who didn't amount to much when he was your age. — E.W. Howe

With my channel, and what people associate with Internet, most people think it goes viral, you become this huge thing super quick. I never had an explosion or a huge thing. It's just been something that has progressively been growing. It's been building. — PewDiePie

For instance, the need of large corporations to analyze market opportunities according to established metrics prevented them from grasping the contours of nascent markets emerging around new technologies. Lower short-term profits from these new markets go against the culture of maximizing quarterly share prices. And the dilemma replicates itself with each wave of innovation: as the first companies to exploit disruptive technologies gain and grow, "it becomes progressively more difficult for them to enter the even newer smaller markets destined to become the large ones of the future."47 — Moises Naim

To focus capital and entrepreneurship into empowering innovation, we should change is the capital gains tax rate. We would be better served by a regressive tax rate, that would become progressively smaller the longer the investment is held. — Clayton Christensen

In 1998, I set up and directed a research group at the Nanotechnology Institute newly created in the Research Center of Karlsruhe. This allowed to offer to former post-doctoral coworkers the opportunity to develop and to progressively set up independent research activities in nanoscience and nanotechnology. — Jean-Marie Lehn

Little value comes out of the belief that people will respond progressively better by treating them progressively worse. — Eric Harvey

With each passing year the difficulty of meeting any fixed quantitative target increases progressively. Moreover, plausible estimates of when the Protocol would go into effect leave such a small window of time before the first commitment period that achievement of the Kyoto targets will eventually pass out of reach. — Henry Sylvester Jacoby

no simple mechanism could do the job as well or better. It might simply be that nobody has yet found the simpler alternative. The Ptolemaic system (with the Earth in the center, orbited by the Sun, the Moon, planets, and stars) represented the state of the art in astronomy for over a thousand years, and its predictive accuracy was improved over the centuries by progressively complicating the model: adding epicycles upon epicycles to the postulated celestial motions. Then the entire system was overthrown by the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was simpler and - though only after further elaboration by Kepler - more predictively accurate.63 Artificial intelligence methods are now used in more areas than it would make sense to review here, but mentioning a sampling of them will give an idea of the breadth of applications. Aside from the game AIs — Nick Bostrom

Then the molecules bestowed upon the seeker "the curse of progress". Progress was something by which man could make his society progressively more iniquitous and unjust and thereby feel more miserable. The other life forms never deviated from what Mother Nature had endowed them with. The seeker had to run faster than his designed speed to achieve progress while the lower creations, who never desired any progress, maintained their designed speed. Going faster than the design is surely going to have a deleterious effect on the engine and the chassis. You cannot send a bullock cart to space and expect it to retrieve a lost satellite. And that was what that exactly happened. — Biju Vasudevan

God will never tempt you. It's not in His nature. In fact, He promises to provide an escape route for every tempting situation. But I can promise you this: God will test your faith. And those tests won't get easier. They will get progressively harder as the stakes get higher. And those tests will undoubtedly revolve around what is most important to you...

God will test you to make sure your identity and your security are found in the cross of Jesus Christ. And God will go after anything you trust in more than Him until you put it on the altar. — Mark Batterson

It was making me think about human life in a way I didn't want to think about it. Human life, I realized, got progressively worse as you got older, by the sound of things. — Matt Haig

People have had certain assumptions in the past about Conservative governments, partly because of some of the things that happened in the 1980s, and partly because of the tone of some of the debate in the 1980s that appeared to say public spending on the arts was something you might want to progressively reduce. — Jeremy Hunt

This problem," Rick said, "stems entirely from your method of operation, Mr. Rosen. Nobody forced your organization to evolve the production of humanoid robots to a point where - "
"We produced what the colonists wanted," Eldon Rosen said. "We followed the time-honored principle underlying every commercial venture. If our firm hadn't made these progressively more human types, other firms in the field would have. We knew the risk we were taking when we developed the Nexus-6 brain unit. But your Voigt-Kampff test was a failure before we released that type of android. If you had failed to classify a Nexus-6 android as an android, if you had checked it out as human - but that's not what happened." His voice had become hard and bitingly penetrating. "Your police department - others as well - may have retired, very probably have retired, authentic humans with underdeveloped empathic ability, such as my innocent niece here. Your position, Mr. Deckard, is extremely bad morally. Ours isn't. — Philip K. Dick

An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual.
This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

For God Himself works in our souls, in the deepest depths, taking increasing control as we are progressively willing to be prepared for His wonder. — Thomas Raymond Kelly

But obviously a state which becomes progressively more and more of a unity will cease to be a state at all. Plurality of numbers is natural in a state; and the farther it moves away from plurality towards unity, the less of a state it becomes and the more a household, and the household in turn an individual. — Aristotle.

We fight wars from progressively great heights and distances, the blessings of technology steadily removing the personal human element from what was historically an extremely personal experience. — Steven Weber

I only have three scenes and each is a turn and she gets progressively drunker. It's all terribly funny and its main challenge is that it's so far away from what I usually do. — Louise Jameson

The rules of syntax and intonation and words matured over time into the system we have today because they were progressively refined by use and the forge of survival and reproduction - not because the brain got big and complicated for some other reason, and all of a sudden we discovered we could now manipulate symbols as well. — Christine Kenneally

You don't have to be brilliant. It's enough to become progressively less stupid. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Development, it turns out, occurs through this process of progressively more complex exchange between a child and somebody else- especially somebody who's crazy about that child — Urie Bronfenbrenner

The Left likes to think of itself as the bulwark of progressive liberal individualism, and yet it seeks to progressively coerce others to fund every social program under the sun via majority rule. — Dave Brat

Many people who have progressively lowered their personal standards in an attempt to win social acceptance and life's comforts bitterly resent those of philosophical bent who refuse to compromise their spiritual ideals and who seek to better themselves. — Epictetus

I can't believe I let you talk me into this," muttered Serena, as the number 16 bus rumbled over the bridge connecting the north and south sides of the town.
"I didn't talk you into anything," I reminded her as we reached Jason's neighbourhood and began passing a string of progressively nicer - and larger - houses. "You invited yourself along."
"Okay, then I can't believe you didn't talk me out of this. — Kathleen Peacock

It is natural selection that gives direction to changes, orients chance, and slowly, progressively produces more complex structures, new organs, and new species. Novelties come from previously unseen association of old material. To create is to recombine. — Francois Jacob

One of the many troubles of growing older is that it gets progressively harder to find a famous historical figure who hadn't yet amounted to anything by the time he was your age. — Sebastian Horsley

Some books were little stairways, different levels of the self telling the same stories at progressively higher levels of the ladder. — Tantra Bensko

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power. — Aldous Huxley

Our age is one of frustration, anxiety, agitation, and addiction to "dope." Somehow we must grab what we can while we can, and drown out the realization that the whole thing is futile and meaningless. This "dope" we call our high standard of living, a violent and complex stimulation of the senses, which makes them progressively less sensitive and thus in need of yet more violent stimulation. We crave distraction - a panorama of sights, sounds, thrills, and titillations into which as much as possible must be crowded in the shortest possible time. To — Alan W. Watts

It is a curious fact about British Islanders, who hate drill and have not been invaded for nearly a thousand years, that as danger comes nearer and grows they become progressively less nervous; when it is imminent the are fierce, when it is mortal they are fearless. — Winston Churchill

The goal is always the same: to break a skill into its component pieces (circuits), memorize those pieces individually, then link them together in progressively larger groupings (new, interconnected circuits). — Dan Coyle

As technological civilization diminishes the biotic diversity of the earth, language itself is diminished. As there are fewer and fewer songbirds in the air, due to the destruction of their forests and wetlands, human speech loses more and more of its evocative power. For when we no longer hear the voices of warbler and wren, our own speaking can no longer be nourished by their cadences. As the splashing speech of the rivers is silenced by more and more dams, as we drive more and more of the land's wild voices into the oblivion of extinction, our own languages become increasingly impoverished and weightless, progressively emptied of their earthly resonance.17 — David Abram

I think there are a few brands like Nike and Patagonia which are quite progressively minded. — Ma Jun

But, had I a place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively. I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his. — Jane Austen

Christians, day by day, week by week, and month by month, are told to walk in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit means being led and directed by the Holy Spirit. This comes as we progressively yield various areas of our lives to the Spirit's control. Now desire in itself is not wrong, it's what we desire or lust for that is wrong - and when we yield. — Billy Graham

This is getting out of hand. We are seeing more and more cases of orthorexia nervosa" - people who progressively withdraw different foods in what they perceive as an attempt to improve their health. "First, they come off gluten. Then corn. Then soy. Then tomatoes. Then milk. After a while, they don't have anything left to eat - and they proselytize about it. Worse is what parents are doing to their children. — Anonymous

The disciple is one who, intent upon becoming Christ-like and so dwelling in his "faith and practice," systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end. — Renovare

Our spirits are united with Jesus at salvation, but our minds are being progressively transformed into his nature. — Pat Robertson