Progressive Quotes - page 20
We humans have always defined ourselves by narration. What's happening today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our stories for us. The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform. Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow sociology, and insidious lies. Individualism is bad for business – though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent. And yes, it's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism..
Tom Robbins
They say great minds think alike. That's also true of tiny minds, and it's especially true of closed ones. I'm always impressed by students who know so much about the world they feel no need to listen to anyone else's opinions, aren't you? Especially when they feel compelled to actively shout them down. That's confidence for you. ... Anyone who's unwilling to hear an opposing opinion has no business attending a university, unless they're planning to graduate with honors in bigotry. And they have no business teaching at one either. There's nothing liberal, intelligent, enlightened, civilized or progressive about shutting somebody up because you don't want other people to hear their opinions. Who are you to decide who should and shouldn't be heard? Who made you emperor? It's not only an incitement to public disorder, it's a form of assault and a violation of the civil rights of everyone around you.
Pat Condell
There are a helluva a lot of Americans trying really hard these days to embrace a new spirit of inclusion and self-reflection, and this progressive allergy to acknowledging societal advances is self-defeating because progress and hope that we can achieve it is the product we're selling and having a warped view of reality leads to policies that are warped. Black-only dorms and graduation ceremonies, a growing belief that Whiteness as a malady and White people as irredeemable, giving up on a colorblind society – only if you believe we've made no progress does any of that make sense.
Bill Maher
Aurangzeb's orthodoxy cannot, of course, be entirely denied. Therefore, explanations upon explanations – secular explanations! – are invented...The general conclusion: what Aurangzeb did ‘was a setback to the policy of broad toleration followed by his predecessors'! And even he did it for secular reasons! And even though compelled by these reasons, he did it only for the shortest time, for the years marked by hostilities instigated by ‘local elements'! ... However, there is little mystery. For there are two pillars of progressive history writing in India: first, to fabricate evidence which will establish Hindus to be intolerant; second, to respect and show an empathetic understanding of Islamic communalism. And the litmus test of whether you are committed to secular history writing is whether you are prepared to stand up for Aurangzeb!
Aurangzeb
Barack Obama's naïve, almost schoolyard-level attitude toward international politics is on display again today, as he says the US needs to set a better example for Russia: Obama: Russia, U.S. should not ‘charge into' other countries. This is normal "progressive" thinking, and you find these bizarre assumptions everywhere in leftist circles: if we just achieve some noble ideal of behavior, that alone will be enough to usher in a new era of peace and global good will - and in the meantime, it's important to let our adversaries know that we're not perfect and we understand their feelings.
Charles Foster Johnson
One of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance is, that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression as a necessary accompaniment of variation. It will account equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require Lamarck's continual creation of monads; for this was a necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages, there were as many beings of the simplest structure in existence as ever.
Charles Lyell
The most striking change during the past 20 years can be seen in attitudes toward homophobia. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, an almost total silence hung over gay and lesbian advocacy. No openly gay person could be a movement leader. Today homophobia persists; most progressive, straight Chicanos as well as Chicanas still fail to see gay and lesbian rights as another struggle of other oppressed people. Too many still fail to see homophobia as a sometimes murderous force of discrimination. But the situation has improved, especially in some major cities, in academia and among youth.
Elizabeth Martinez
The direction which the revolution will take depends, no doubt, upon the sum total of the various circumstances that determine the coming of the cataclysm. But it can be predicted in advance, according to the vigor of revolutionary action displayed in the preparatory period by the different progressive parties. ... The party which has made most revolutionary propaganda and which has shown most spirit and daring will be listened to on the day when it is necessary to act, to march in front in order to realize the revolution.
Peter Kropotkin
In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense - not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.
Peter Kropotkin
Some of the worst violence in American history occurred during the period of low partisan polarization stretching from the late Progressive era to the late 1970s-the moment for which Joe Biden waxed nostalgic. In Ivy League debate rooms and the Senate cloakroom, white men could discuss the most divisive issues of the day with all the politeness befitting what was for them a low-stakes conflict. Outside, the people whose rights were actually at stake were fighting and dying to have those rights recognized.
Joe Biden
Its funny no one ever applies the term "progressive rock" to Kate Bush, but to me its prog. It's the same think I love about the best prog, it's like, the really sort of brash stuff, people showing technical ability, I have no interest in, but the experimental dreamy stuff, that sort of came from many places at once, I set her stuff next to, well next to Janis, is the obvious comparison...
Kate Bush
The people are not satisfied with any form of government, or statute law, until it comes up to their sense of justice; so every progressive State revises its statutes from time to time, and at each revision comes nearer to the absolute right which human nature demands. Mankind, always progressive, revolutionizes constitutions, changes and changes, seeking to come close to the ideal justice, the divine and immutable law of the world, to which we all owe fealty, swear how we will.
Theodore Parker
In many ways, the US led the world toward the development of progressive taxation and the reduction of inequality at the global level during the first half of the 20th century... Unfortunately, one century later, in 2019, the rise of inequality creates new threats to liberal democracies. It is time to take a new step and to develop new policy instruments, in line with the challenges raised by global wealth trends.
Thomas Piketty
The worldwide dangers of war, famine, cults of personality, and bureaucracy - these are perils for all of mankind.
Recognition by the working class and the intelligentsia of their common interests has been a striking phenomenon of the present day. The most progressive, internationalist, and dedicated element of the intelligentsia is, in essence, part of the working class, and the most advanced, educated, internationalist, and broad-minded part of the working class is part of the intelligentsia.
Andrei Sakharov
Fascism lasted twelve years in Germany. Stalinism lasted twice as long in the Soviet Union. There are many common features but also certain differences. Stalinism exhibited a much more subtle kind of hypocrisy and demagogy, with reliance not on an openly cannibalistic program like Hitler's but on a progressive, scientific, and popular socialist ideology.
This served as a convenient screen for deceiving the working class, for weakening the vigilance of the intellectuals and other rivals in the struggle for power, with the treacherous and sudden use of the machinery of torture, execution, and informants, intimidating and making fools of millions of people, the majority of whom were neither cowards nor fools. As a consequence of this "specific feature" of Stalinism, it was the Soviet people, its most active, talented, and honest representatives, who suffered the most terrible blow.
Andrei Sakharov
The author is quite aware of the monstrous relations in human and international affairs brought forth by the egotistical principle of capital when it is not under pressure from socialist and progressive forces. He also thinks, however, that progressives in the West understand this better than he does and are waging a struggle against these manifestations. The author is concentrating his attention on what is before his eyes and on what is obstructing, from his point of view, a worldwide overcoming of estrangement, obstructing the struggle for democracy, social progress, and intellectual freedom.
Our country has started on the path of cleansing away the foulness of Stalinism. "We are squeezing the slave out of ourselves drop by drop" (an expression of Anton Chekhov). We are learning to express our opinions, without taking the lead from the bosses and without fearing for our lives.
Andrei Sakharov
