World Improvement Quotes

There is nothing good in this world which time does not improve. ~ Alexander Smith

Curiosity is essential for progress. Only when we look to worlds beyond our own can we really know if there's room for improvement. ~ Simon Sinek

I want us to be judged by the impact we have on the health of the people of Africa and the health of women. Improvements in the health of the people of Africa and the health of women are key indicators of the performance of WHO. This is a health organization for the whole world ... But we must focus our attention on the people in greatest need. ~ Margaret Chan

When I look back at the world championships, I know there's a lot of room for improvement, I'm always up for a challenge. The Olympics, they don't define me, I've had some good and some bad. But it's all about the Olympic experience. ~ Michelle Kwan

Excellence matters, and technology advances so fast that the potential for improvement is tremendous. So, since becoming CEO again, I've pushed hard to increase our velocity, improve our execution, and focus on the big bets that will make a difference in the world. ~ Larry Page

In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays. ~ David Landes

Adaptability is about the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win. ~ Max McKeown

The notion that property is the means to all other means was ruled out by the new radicals. The deep seated ressentiment towards private property, indeed towards anything private, blocked the conclusion that follows from any impartial examination of wealth-producing and freedom-favouring mechanisms: an effective world improvement would call for the most general possible propertization. Instead, the political metanoeticians enthused over general dispossession, akin to the founders of Christian orders who wanted to own everything communally and nothing individually. The most important insight into the dynamics of economic modernization remained inaccessible to them: money created by lending on property is the universal means of world improvement. They are all the blinder to the fact that for the meantime, only the modern tax state, the anonymous hyper-billionaire, can act as a general world-improver, naturally in alliance with the local meliorists - not only because of its traditional school power, but most of all thanks to its redistributive power, which took on unbelievable proportions in the course of the twentieth century. The current tax state, for its part, can only survive as long as it is based on a property economy whose actors put up no resistance when half of their total product is taken away, year after year, by the very visible hand of the national treasury for the sake of communal tasks. What the un-calm understands least of all is the simple fact that when govern ~ Peter Sloterdijk

For each improvement of yourself, there is an improvement of your world. ~ Avina Celeste

Christ did not come to civilize. He came to save. Civilization is not the solution; it does not destroy the works of the devil. All civilization aims at world improvement, at the gradual elimination of the curse; it is a process of evolution. It is like a man who is suffering from a terrible disease, and the physician who comes to help him gives him a salve to apply. He treats the skin symptoms but the source of the disease he never considers and never touches. Such is a boasted and progressive civilization. It is a delusion. ~ Arno C. Gaebelein

Effective altruism is about asking "How can I make the biggest difference I can?" and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's true, and a committment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be. As the phrase suggests, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's best for the world, and a commitment to do what's best, whatever that turns out to be. ~ William MacAskill

President David O. McKay put it beautifully when he said, speaking of mothers, 'This ability and willingness properly to rear children, the gift to love, and eagerness, yes, longing to express it in soul development, make motherhood the noblest office or calling in the world ... ' (Gospel Ideals, Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953, pp. 453-54). ~ H. Burke Peterson

I promise you that I want to do this more than anything else in the world," he said, pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth." I have wanted to since you first returned, but I thought giving you time would be prudent."
"And here I was, thinking you would have rather slept in a pool of lava than with me," I joked, but it wasn't enti false. I gave him a quick kiss in return. "We need to work on this whole talking to each other thing. We'd get a lot more done if we did."
"Yes, we would" he said before capturing my lips once more. ~ Aimee Carter

She was a quiet girl, a thoughtful girl. But you never could tell what was going on in that pretty little head of hers. Whether she was planning her next tea party; or a plot to take over the world. ~ N.R. Hart

Darling
I suppose the world would consider us absolutely crazy, but it is wonderful to feel that way, isn't it? Sort of a perpetual springtime in our hearts. ~ Rachel Carson

The European princes create among themselves a jus publicum Europaeum, a secular legal order under which they recognize each other's rights and interests, within Europe (the proviso here is crucial). Beyond the line, in the extra-European world, Europeans engage in large-scale appropriations of land, respecting neither the rights of the locals nor each other's rights, but within Europe a different modus vivendi is possible. In the extra-European world appalling atrocities occur which would not happen, or at least ought not to happen, in Europe.5 ~ Louiza Odysseos

Cam had once told her that the Rom believed the entire world was their home. As long as you were with your family you were home. ~ Lisa Kleypas

She knew that she had a tendency to allow her mind to wander, but surely that's what made the world interesting. One thought led to another, one memory triggered another. How dull it would be, she thought, not to be reminded of the interconnectedness of everything, how dull for the present not to evoke the past, for here not to imply there. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

If a given idea has been held in the human mind for many generations, as almost all our common ideas have, it takes sincere and continued effort to remove it; and if it is one of the oldest we have in stock, one of the big, common, unquestioned world ideas, vast is the labor of those who seek to change it. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

We are in the dark places of the earth," said Madman. "Where all the ancient and most dangerous secrets are kept. There are Old Things down here, sleeping all around us, in the earth and in the living rock, and in the spaces between spaces. Keep your voices down. Some of these old creatures sleep but lightly, and even their dreams can have force and substance in our limited world. We have come among forgotten gods and sleeping devils, from the days before the world settled down and declared itself sane. ~ Simon R. Green

Third world nations are producing too many children too fast ... it is time to ignore the controversy over family planning and cut out-of-control population growth ... ~ Al Gore

I thought of telling him I didn't know about reasons, only about chains - how they form themselves, link by link, out of nothing; how they knit themselves into the world. Sometimes you can grab a chain and use it to pull yourself out of a dark place. Mostly, though, I think you get wrapped up in them. Just caught, if you're lucky. Fucking strangled, if you're not. ~ Stephen King

The world is quite right. It does not have to be consistent. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says 'Jesus is the answer' next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to says 'Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world. ~ Shane Claiborne

Halfway back up the hillside, Cecilia reached behind her, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Brian to lean forward to take her hand. ~ Davis Bunn

you will perhaps miss
the part of you that is gone
but do not fear:
all is for the best in the world
and soon you will not realize it is gone:
you have either forgotten it entirely or
it has come back
alive ~ Tah The Trickster

How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food and beer conglomerates. Who'd have ever guessed product consumption, popular entertainment and spirituality would mix so harmoniously. It's a beautiful world, all right. ~ Bill Watterson

I think it's a beautiful thing how Hip Hop is received by the world. ~ Aeriel Miranda

There's many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don't. ~ E.F. Benson

I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you. ~ Frank Stella

As much as some people would like to believe, for their own peace of mind, that the appearance of evil in this world had a clean cause, the truth was never that simple. ~ Marisha Pessl

All is artifice in my world, Constantine. Even me. Especially me. He taught me to be a duchess, to be an impregnable fortress, to be the guardian of my own heart, But he admitted that he could not teach me how or when to allow the fortress to be breached or my heart to be unlocked. It would simply happen, he said. he promised it would, in fact. But how is love to find me, even assuming it is looking? ~ Mary Balogh

I took a steadying breath. "Listen, I know we have a full night ahead of us, but I wanted to give you your birthday present."

"Oh, darling, you didn't need to get me anything. Every day with you is a gift." He leaned in and kissed me.

"Well, I hadn't planned on getting you a gift, but then something presented itself, so here we are."

"All right then," he said, placing his glass on the ground. "I'm ready. Where is it?"

"That's the only problem," I started. I felt my hands begin to shake. "It won't actually arrive for another seven or eight months."

He smiled but squinted. "Eight months? What in the world could take . . ."

As his words drifted away, so did his eyes, leaving my face and making their way to my stomach. He seemed to expect me to look different, for me to be as big as a house already. But I'd done my best to hide everything: the tiredness, the nausea, the sudden distaste for foods.

He stared on and on, and I waited for him to smile or laugh or jump up and down. But he sat there, frozen to the point that it started to frighten me.

"Maxon?" I reached out and touched his leg. "Maxon, are you all right?"

He nodded, still watching my stomach. ~ Kiera Cass

Even when light fades and darkness falls--as it does every single day, in every single life--God does not turn the world over to some other deity...Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

He felt as if there were something inside him that didn't fit in with their merriment, with their willing ignorance of the world outside the castle. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I matter. My feelings deserve attention. My desires deserve fulfillment. My dreams count. I matter, not because I'm selfish, but because if I don't value my body, mind, and spirit, the world will destroy me. And when I do value myself, I am indestructible. ~ Toni Sorenson

Names govern the world. ~ Hannah More

All religions in the world teach us peace and not violence. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Three words that still have meaning, that I think we can apply to all professional writing, are discovery, originality, invention.The professional writer discovers some aspect of the world and invents out of the speech of his time some particularly apt and original way of putting it down on paper. ~ John Dos Passos

I believe the hard heartest, most cross grained and most unloving Christians in all the world are those who have not had much trouble in their life. And those that are the most sympathizing, loving and Christlike are generally those who have the most affliction. The worse thing that can happen to any of us is to have a path made too smooth. One of the greatest blessings the Lord ever gave us was a cross. ~ Charles Spurgeon

Something I've always known about the screen is that if it's anything in the world, it's literal. It's so literal that there's a whole lot you can't do because you're stuck with the literalness of the screen. The stage is not literal. ~ Joan Didion

The perpetual mourner
the grief that can never be healed
is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning
a new acquaintance with grief. ~ George Eliot

Do you know what it's like for two people to live in the same house as if they were in different parts of the world? ~ Peter Shaffer

I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing - not just from the wild, but from people's everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals can have. Eventually rarity is all they are made of. The condor is an icon of extinction. There's little else to it now but being the last of its kind. And in this lies the diminution of the world. How can you love something, how can you fight to protect it, if all it means is loss? ~ Helen Macdonald

I was a very religious child - I went to synagogue at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And I remember my religiousness as good - I think religion is good for children, especially educated children, because it allows for imagination, a whole imaginative world apart from the practical world. ~ Yehuda Amichai

Oh, the places you'll go when you watch the news. After exposing myself to the day's headlines, my only thought is this: I will never, ever, ever bring a child into this world, for the same reason I will never, ever, ever buy a pet hamster, bring it home from the store, and then drop it into an enclosed tank which has been filled with mustard gas. After all, it's pretty much the same thing. ~ Josh Woodrose

I learned one thing; you never do anything for fame or money. You only do things 'cause they're fun or good. If you can combine the two at the same time, you can make a contribution to the world and have a lot of happiness. ~ Abbie Hoffman

The news today about 'Atomic bombs' is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope 'this will ensure peace'. But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien