#ogres

But with the slow menace of a glacier, depression came on. No one had any measure of its progress; no one had any plan for stopping it. Everyone tried to get out of its way. ↗

— Frances Perkins

#came #depression #everyone #get #glacier

Those societies in which seriousness, tradition, conformity and adherence to long-established - often god-prescribed - ways of doing things are the strictly enforced rule, have always been the majority across time and throughout the world. Such people are not known for their sense of humour and lightness of touch; they rarely break a smile. To them, change is always suspect and usually damnable, and they hardly ever contribute to human development. By contrast, social, artistic and scientific progress as well as technological advance are most evident where the ruling culture and ideology give men and women permission to play, whether with ideas, beliefs, principles or materials. And where playful science changes people's understanding of the way the physical world works, political change, even revolution, is rarely far behind. ↗

— Paul Kriwaczek

#play #progress #change

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#around #better #change #change things #courageous

The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called "merely cultural," not even living in the traditional air, but breathing into their space helmets a scientific mixture of synthetic gases (and polluted at that) are the true pioneers. Their circuitry seems to include no atavistic domestic sentiment, they have suffered empathectomy, their computers hum no ghostly feedback of Home, Sweet Home. How marvelously free they are! How unutterably deprived! ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#empathy #modern-society #progress #shallowness #technology

From the will of a freedom-fighter, Farzad Kamangar: "Is it possible to be a teacher and not show the path to the sea to the little fish of the country? Is it possible to carry the heavy burden of being a teacher and be responsible for spreading the seeds of knowledge and still be silent? Is it possible to see the lumps in the throats of the students and witness their thin and malnourished faces and keep quiet? … I cannot imagine witnessing the pain and poverty of the people of this land and fail to give our hearts to the river and the sea, to the roar and the flood. ↗

— Samad Beh-Rang

#pedagogy #progressive #ruby-emam #the-little-black-fish #freedom

We do not have to be ashamed of what we are. As sentient beings we have wonderful backgrounds. These backgrounds may not be particularly enlightened or peaceful or intelligent. Nevertheless, we have soil good enough to cultivate; we can plant anything in it. ↗

— Chögyam Trungpa

#background #confidence #cultivation #development #enlightenment

The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness not to stop your progress. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#fear #life #motivational #progress #life

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#elements #healthy #life #necessary #order

My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library. ↗

— Peter Golkin

#bicycles #bike #bikes #conservation #favorite

The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#knowledge #life #progress #reason #faith