#progress

It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This [Northern conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. ↗

— Robert Lewis Dabney

#progressivism #radicalism #respect

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#non-physical-phenomena #progress #science #science

What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move about, meet and be stupid together ↗

— Julian Barnes

#progress #science #stupidity #science

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea. ↗

— Barbara Amiel

#confusion #equates #idea #new #nothing

The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know. ↗

— Gaston Bachelard

#did #know #knowing #our #progress

In fact, even the perception of a resurgence in crime can be enough to paralyze business momentum and destroy the sense of security that a vibrant and progressive city requires. ↗

— Alan Autry

#city #crime #destroy #enough #even

The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this. ↗

— David Axelrod

#anybody #anything #cut #forward #going

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison. ↗

— Walter Bagehot

#early #food #had #late #poison

'3:10 to Yuma' was one that I just kept on talking and thinking about after reading it. And I think the reason is because, like in most Westerns, you have the very clear-cut bad-guy/good-guy, however, as the movie progresses, you kind of see that it's a very fine line that divides these two. ↗

— Christian Bale

#after #because #clear-cut #divides #fine

The Democratic Party is on the move across the country. Voters are responding to our message of progress and fiscal responsibility. ↗

— Joe Andrew

#country #democratic #democratic party #fiscal #fiscal responsibility