Improvement Quotes - Page 38

• The average condition of the people improving or deteriorating, depends upon whether population is advancing faster than improvement, or improvement than population.

  John Stuart Mill

  Average, People, Population

  1848 Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

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• Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Compulsory

  "Deming The Way We Knew Him". Book by Frank Voehl, 1995.

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• Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the accumulated waters caused by the obstructions which an ultra conservatism has thrown across the stream of progress; and revolution itself is but the sudden overwhelming and sweeping away of impediments that should have been seasonably removed.

  Horace Mann

  Should Have, Opposites, Race

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• The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

  Immanuel Kant

  Men, Numbers, Vanity

  Immanuel Kant (1904). “The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant”

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• A lost sheep is, for all practical purposes a dead sheep. It is the admission that we are dead in our sins---that we have no power of ourselves either to save ourselves or to convince anyone else that we are worth saving. It is the recognition that our whole life is out of our hands and that if we ever live again, our life will be entirely the gift of some gracious shepherd. God finds us the desert of death (not in the garden of improvement) and in the power of Jesus' resurrection, he puts us on his shoulders rejoicing and brings us home.

  Robert Farrar Capon

  Jesus, Home, Garden

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• Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country.

  Hank Aaron

  Country, Feet, Long

  "40 years later, Hank Aaron's grace a beauty to behold". www.usatoday.com. April 7, 2014.

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• I'm addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there's so damn much about myself to improve.

  A. J. Jacobs

  Self, Obsession, Damn

  "Drop Dead Healthy" by A.J. Jacobs, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 13, 2012.

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• Reading off a Teleprompter is an easy skill to do passably well and a difficult skill to do very well. I still have room for improvement there. I still talk too fast and I'm trying to slow myself down.

  Chris Hayes

  Reading, Skills, Trying

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• So I learned that the people who make the most of the process of encountering reality, especially the painful obstacles, learn the most and get what they want faster than people who do not. ... In short, I learned that being totally truthful, especially about mistakes and weaknesses, led to a rapid rate of improvement and movement toward what I wanted.

  Ray Dalio

  Mistake, Reality, People

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• The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.

  Anthony Lane

  Revenge, Two, Dying

  "Space Case". www.newyorker.com. May 23, 2005.

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• Sustained success is largely a matter of focusing regularly on the right things and making a lot of uncelebrated little improvements every day.

  Theodore Levitt

  Littles, Matter, Sustained Success

  Mortimer Levitt, Theodore Levitt (1998). “Thinking About Management”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• Continual improvement involves an appreciation that there is always a better way to do things irrespective of how much you have achieved or how comfortable you might be with where you currently are in life. As a young international rugby player I learnt a valuable lesson about sacrifice. The bottom line was the phrase 'long after the price is forgotten the quality remains'. Undertaking JOLT Challenge involves sacrifice but it is well worth it as you explore creative and innovative ways of challenging yourself for constant improvement in many areas of life.

  Nick Farr-Jones

  Appreciation, Sacrifice, Player

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• Man ever talks, and Man ever dreams Of better days that are yet to be, After glittering goal, that distant gleams, Running and racing untiringly. The worldly may grow old and young as it will, But the Hope of man is Improvement still. Hope bears him into life in her arms, She flutters around the boy's young bloom, The soul of youth with her magic warms, Nor rests with age in the silent tomb; For ends man his weary course at the grave, There plants he Hope o'er his ashes to wave.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Running, Dream, Hope

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• Although the devil be the father of lies, he seems, like other great inventors, to have lost much of his reputation by the continual improvements that have been made upon him.

  Jonathan Swift

  Father, Lying, Devil

  Jonathan Swift (2011). “Gulliver's Travels and Other Writings”, p.558, Bantam Classics

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• Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.

  Jonathan Swift

  Self Improvement, Rats, Rage

  Letter to Bolingbroke, 21 March 1730, in Harold Williams (ed.) 'The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift' vol. 3 (1963) p. 382

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• The breakdown of Plato's philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state.

  John Dewey

  Plato, Philosophy, Would Be

  "Democracy and Education". Book by John Dewey, 1916.

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• A natural parent has only two things principally to consider, the improvement of his son, and the finances to do it with.

  George Washington

  Son, Two, Parent

  George Washington (1908). “Letters and Addresses,”

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• Very little comes easily to our poor, benighted species (the first creature, after all, to experiment with the novel evolutionary inventions of self-conscious philosophy and art). Even the most "obvious," "accurate," and "natural" style of thinking or drawing must be regulated by history and won by struggle. Solutions must therefore arise within a social context and record the complex interactions of mind and environment that define the possibility of human improvement.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Art, Philosophy, Struggle

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.72, Harvard University Press

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• Lysenkoism: A forlorn attempt not merely to colonize the botanical kingdom, but to instill a proper sense of the puritan work ethic and the merits of self-improvement.

  J. G. Ballard

  Self, Work Ethic, Kingdoms

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

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• I am very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves and useful to the world.

  Joseph Addison

  Gentleman, Quality, World

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.173

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• Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  War, Men, Weapons

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

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• Usually, so far as improvement in the people's economic conditions is concerned, humanitarians simply play the role of the busybody.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Play, People, Roles

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

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• To regard human beings as tools - as instruments - for the use of other human beings is not only unscientific but it is repugnant, stupid and short sighted. Tools are made by man but have not the autonomy of their maker - they have not man's time-binding capacity for initiation, for self-direction, and self-improvement.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Stupid, Men, Self

  Alfred Korzybski (1974). “Manhood of humanity”, p.133, Рипол Классик

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• You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Effort, Arrogance

  Ludvig von Mises' letter to Ayn Rand praising Atlas Shrugged (January 23, 1958) as quoted in Jorg Guido Hulsmann "Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism", September 4, 2007.

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• I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

  Henry George

  Powerful, Self, Envy

  Henry George (1884). “Social Problems”

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