Quotes About Improvement

Socialism in Russia has not brought about an improvement in the conditions of the average man which can be compared with the improvement of conditions, during the same period, in the United States.

It is impossible to improve any process until it is standardized. If the process is shifting from here to there, then any improvement will just be one more variation that is occasionally used and mostly ignored. One must standardize, and thus stabilize the process, before continuous improvement can be made.

Our goals should stretch us bit by bit. So often when we think we have encountered a ceiling, it is really a psychological or experimental barrier that we have built ourselves. We built it and we can remove it. Just as correct principles, when applied, carry their own witness that they are true, so do correct personal improvement programs. But we must not expect personal improvement without pain or some 'remodeling.' We can't expect to have the thrills of revealed religion without the theology. We cannot expect to have the soul stretching without Christian service.

When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.

Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.

The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.

Continual improvement is an unending journey

The young man who addresses himself in stern earnest to organizing his life-his habits, his associations, his reading, his study, his work-stands far more chance of rising to a position affording him opportunity to exercise his organizing abilities than the fellow who dawdles along without chart or compass, without plan or purpose, without self-improvement and self-discipline.

In the decade ahead I can predict that we will provide over twice the productivity improvement that we provided in the '90s.

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.

The characteristic mark of economic history under capitalism is unceasing economic progress, a steady increase in the quantity of capital goods available, and a continuous trend toward an improvement in the general standard of living.

You must purge yourself before finding faults in others. When you see a mistake in somebody else, try to find if you are making the same mistake. This is the way to take judgment and to turn it into improvement.

America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being—confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented—is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced.

The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership.... a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.

One improvement I have learned from my childhood experience with my father: I do not threaten punishment in the morning. That was awful. Late into the night I would lie awake tossing and wondering what he was going to do to me. Usually he did nothing. A quiet, impressive 'talking to' was all I got.

No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

Nobody can be saved from anything, unless they save themselves. It is hopeless doing things for people - it is often very dangerous to do things at all - and the only thing worth doing for the race is to increase its stock of ideas. Then, if you make available a larger stock, people are at liberty to help themselves from out of it. By this process the means of improvement is offered, to be accepted or rejected freely, and there is a faint hope of progress in the course of millennia. Such is the business of the philosopher, to open new ideas. It is not his business to impose them on people.

You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for our own improvement, and at the same time share a genaral responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think can be most useful.

That the ulterior significance of every mode of human association lies in the contribution which it makes to the improvement of the quality of experience is a fact most easily recognized in dealing with the immature.

Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

In old days men studied for the sake of self-improvement; nowadays men study in order to impress other people.

Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.

Increased knowledge of heredity means increased power of control over the living thing, and as we come to understand more and more the architecture of the plant or animal we realize what can and what cannot be done towards modification or improvement.

Almost everything that I behold in this wonderful country bears traces of improvement and reform - everything except Pie.

We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many.

When something is 'new and improved', which is it? If it's new, then there has never been anything before it. If it's an improvement, then there must have been something before it.

Every managerial act must be seen as an unequivocal support for urgency in pursuit of constant testing, change, and improvement.

The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.

Changes made by management today make no improvement.

The march of intellect is proceeding at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds, with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.

Every improvement in our conceptions of justice, as well as in the machinery for the administration of justice, whereby a closer approximation to exact justice may be secured, will make for social peace, though the mere adjudication of conflicting interests will not remove the conflicts themselves nor their cause. That lies deeper than legislatures or courts can probe.

As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

I will ignore all ideas for new works and engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvement I see no further hope.

In all, 86 per cent of the increased life expectancy was due to decreases in infectious diseases. And the bulk of the decline in infectious disease deaths occurred prior to the age of antibiotics. Less than 4 per cent of the total improvement in life expectancy since 1700s can be credited to twentieth-century advances in medical care.

Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improvement.

I was glad to hear of that determination as I detest the practice of cousins marrying or any marriage between persons in which there can be traced the most distant relationship. I go for the improvement instead of the deterioration of our race.

In the very progress of society, the prison has in the very nature of things undergone some improvement, but there are vast stretches yet to be covered before the prison becomes, if it ever does, an institution for the reclamation and rehabilitation of erring and unfortunate men and women.

What is going to happen in the course of my day that will be an improvement over lying on something very soft, underneath something very warm, wearing only underwear, doing absolutely nothing, all by myself?

You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.

Improvement is about doing something better; innovation is about doing something new.

Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.

If this was adulthood the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that she could now eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

Society’s future will depend on a continuous improvement program for the human character. And what will that future bring? I do not know, but it will be exciting.

The closest you can get to perfection is constant improvement.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

There are no shortcuts. Be patient and look long-term. It's a foolish idea that if you do a little more, faster, then you'll get better than the rest. It ignores the fact that you must train at your optimal level, not your maximum level. Consistency is the secret to improvement and success. You have to keep training when others lose interest.

It is the constant and undying hope for improvement that makes golf so exquisitely worth playing.