Best Historical Progress Quotes

"Our understanding of the human body, illnesses, medical best practices, and treatments has come a very long way in the past 200 years, and that has helped us enjoy lives that are longer, on average, massively reducing mortality and increased living standards for people suffering from medical conditions."

"For the first time in human history, poverty decreased from a child mortality rate of 74.5 percent in the 1730s and '40s to 31.8 percent in the 1810 to 1829 period."

"200 years ago, 90 percent of the world's population subsisted in extreme poverty. Today, fewer than 10 percent of people do."

"For much of history, it went in a very negative direction, only in the last 200 years or so do we see real deep, sustained progress in large-scale human societies."

"Just the lives of everyday men and women were massively improved."

"I don't see any reason to think that if you look at the trajectory over the past couple of centuries I think it's been basically towards progress towards expanding the domain of Rights and justice."

"So improve this regression yeah so in our country you've been to the mountaintop and see the glory of the coming of the Lord well I think as Martin Luther King put it they are at the arc is bending upwards."

"The moral arc of history is long but it bends toward progress."

"Life was nasty and brutish and short and untraveled and ignorant... and what the Enlightenment did by unleashing the scientific potential, brought humanity forward in a way that had never been experienced at any other time."

"The beauty of the 18th century Revolution is that it enables more inclusiveness over time."

"We're a strong country. We're building a new step and new history of our country."

"The arc of history started to bend toward justice."

"The Arc of history is bending towards Justice."

"He's already arrived but people don't see it. History is moving along a line."

"America's story of progress: fitful, incomplete, but progress."

"Those people walked so that we could run. Those people stood so that way you can stand where you're standing right now."

"A 98 reduction in the climate disaster related death rate over the last century."

"IN MY FAMILY IT TOOK ONE PIECE OF DETERMINATION TO GO FROM SEGREGATION TO THE SUPREME COURT."

"Historically over the long term where over the centuries or even millennia yes we're getting better."

"Historians who use this theory believe that history is always progressing, that the zeitgeist is always improving, and the arrow of history points toward liberal democracy."

"Things are capable of improving, historically over time."

"We went from horse and buggy mainstream to landing on the moon in 69 years."

"The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, but it never does so in a smooth or unbroken line."

"The history of civilization is replete with examples of humanity improving the world in which it lives."

"The arc of history is long, but it bends towards truth."

"Hey guys, just FYI, I have COVID, trust me, you don't want this, get vaccinated."

"He bridged the gap between cavemen struggling to be alive and intellectual beings who could go on to create amazing things such as technology."

"Welcome to the industrial era, I see you're really coming out swinging."

"The pace of innovation today and how far we've come in such a short amount of time."

"The term 'new woman' symbolized choice, freedom, education, and an end to prescriptive gender roles."

"Conservatives are defending the gains of past liberals."

"Throughout our history, a new generation of Americans has reached up and bent the arc of history in the direction of more freedom, and more opportunity, and more justice."

"Mountains snowy Italy to the jungles sweltering Pacific, the dream of victory was now becoming a reality."

"The arc of history is long but it bends toward justice and justice is health care quality health care for all as a right not a privilege."

"Everything about humanity has improved throughout history except contentment."

"If you don't think you need feminism, that's great. But that doesn't mean you aren't benefiting from the work that feminists have done in the past."

"The Arc of history is long but it bends towards justice because of people in the streets."

"And all that innovation and freedom means that if we compare the average person today to someone living 500 years ago, we have a much better standard of living."

"Out of the 18th century and into the new millennium..."

"Medical science has advanced an astounding amount in the last 50 years or so and we can do things today that a half a century ago even in that era’s science fiction would have been considered science fiction."

"Through the ages, man went rolling ahead into the future."

"Because every point of progress in our history there was a point where it couldn't have even been imagined."

"It's the natural order of things. Try not to take it personally. Instead, look at how far we've come."

"In the long scope of History, The Arc bends towards Justice, towards progress."

"From since 1900 we've seen global life expectancy go from 32 years on average to 72 today."

"Society's attitudes toward women have shifted enormously over the last century."

"History is a series of steps where over a sufficiently long enough span of vision we're always going to be making progress."

"We've seen some of the greatest advances in the human condition in the last 70 years, and those are now under threat."

"But we mustn't forget that they were pioneers and progress always comes as a cost."

"Evolution not revolution has been the order of the day."

"The Soviet Union went from being a largely backwards illiterate agrarian nation to rivaling the United States as a world superpower."

"I want to make it count... honor the women that weren't there to see how far the women had progressed."

"The reality is that there is almost no period in human history which saw as rapid and widespread an increase in the well-being of the ordinary man as the nineteenth century."

"...that progression, that progress through history comes through the engine of revolution which is built around an idea manifesting itself in the state of nature, in the political state in particular."

"Historically, there are longer life expectancies, less global hunger."

"Business is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty. Look at China and India and other places, and the story of the last couple of centuries, billions of people have been lifted out of that."

"They were the queens of the world."

"Japan did progress very much under free trade from 1868 to 1914."

"For the first time in history, food shortages began to disappear from continental Europe."

"Our ancestors would have never believed that we would eventually be able to get a forge hot enough to actually melt iron."

"History is not blocked, we are not at a dead end."

"The West has done nearly all the technological progress of the last 700 years."

"The United States has a corrective arc in its history."

"We're doing far better than the Roman Empire did because we're not crucifying people."

"The history of this nation teaches us that in some of our darkest moments of despair, we've made some of our greatest progress."

"The near global collapse of infant and childhood mortality rates over the last century was achieved by science."

"From telegraph to iPhone 11, that's something you couldn't even dream of."

"We've gone from cats and static electricity to making it into a practical purpose."

"Spiritual science enables us to follow its progress over extended periods of time."

"The spirit moved 50 years before the law moved."

"The greatest advances in health status and life expectancy occurred in the early 20th century and result from social movements' efforts."

"There never was a time in history when the world was so open to women as it is today."

"The last 400 years have been about getting to base camp of Mount Everest."

"The New South: This is the south of progress following the Civil War."

"Baghdad remained a global example of progress and enlightenment for centuries."

"The problems of the past have been solved, as the problems of the future will be solved, but only by people."

"I think America has made moral progress in getting rid of slavery, giving women the right to vote."