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Do you feel like you’re not making progress in spite of your efforts? Then today’s post is for you.
It’s easy to feel like you’ve hit a dreaded plateau, whether that’s in a fitness regime, in improving your business, or in getting closer to a goal that you’ve set. It’s rare for someone to hit challenging goals easily – the difficulty prevents the ease.
Sometimes you have to find the inner drive to push on even when nothing seems to be happening or changing.
This is where a few progress quotes can help you.
Why Read Progress Quotes
There’s nothing worse than putting in continued effort in something and seeing no payoff. However, just like the farmer taking care of his crop, it’s not always up to us to decide when the effort starts to bear fruit – we can make rough predictions but the exact dates will forever be unknown.
This is one of the great things about quotes, they can refresh your perspective on a situation and change your mindset. They can inspire patience where there was once frustration, and they can swap restlessness for confidence.
Why? It’s all in the power of your mind – the words that you feed your mind determine, your attitude, your attitude determines how you think about a situation, how you think determines how you act, and your actions drive your results.
This is the internal version of the snowball effect, the right words really can help you find success when things don’t seem to be going too well for you. This is the meaning of the old term “the pen is mightier than the sword”.
So, check out our compilation of progress quotes and you’ll be inspired to look at your situation a bit differently, you might even start coming up with solutions instead of worrying about how everything can go wrong.
70 Making Progress Quotes to Help You Succeed
1. “There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee
2. “Actively recognizing progress towards your goal will ultimately end up inspiring you and have you pushing even harder.” – Denzel J. Wellington
3. “The moment a man ceases to progress, to grow higher, wider and deeper, then his life becomes stagnant.” – Orison Swett Marden
4. “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa
5. “Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper.” – John Updike
6. “Challenges, failures, defeats and ultimately, progress, are what make your life worthwhile.” – Maxime Lagace
7. “The key to happiness is really progress and growth and constantly working on yourself and developing something.” – Lewis Howes
8. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” – George Bernard Shaw
9. “Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.” – Charles Kettering
10. “I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.” – Carl Sandburg
11. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
12. “Personal growth is about progress, not perfection.” – Hal Elrod
13. “Science is the only self-correcting human institution, but it also is a process that progresses only by showing itself to be wrong.” – Allan Sandage
14. “Peace of mind comes from knowing that this too shall pass and good progress comes from good habits.” – Brendon Burchard
15. “It’s not about success, it’s about progress.” – Tony Robbins
16. “I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.” – Abraham Lincoln
17. “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.” – John Stuart Mill
18. “It’s so easy to fall down a rabbit hole of distractions and side conversations, but the very act of tracking your time makes it less likely for you to fall.” – Sanya Weathers
19. “Focus on progress, not perfection.” – Bill Phillips
20. “Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without developing new evils requiring new remedies.” – William Howard Taft
21. “Thanks to technological progress, economies have not only grown, they have also transformed – producing very different output, in very different ways, at different moments in history.” – Daniel Susskind
22. “Pursuing perfection, rather than progress, can set you up for a life of disappointment and inevitable failure. Strive for progress, not perfection.” – Anonymous
23. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller
24. “I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people's trust in their government.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
25. “Never confuse movement with action.” – Ernest Hemingway
26. “Focus on your progress, not your goals.” – Anna Barnes
27. “Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.” – Ed Miliband
28. “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.” – Ronald Reagan
29. “Girls you've gotta know when it's time to turn the page.” – Tori Amos
30. “Progress is the attraction that moves humanity.” – Marcus Garvey
31. “Progression is the essence of what makes you stronger, leaner and more fit.” – Matt Schifferle
32. “There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.” – Miyamoto Musashi
33. “Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.” – Plato
34. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” – Rosa Luxemburg
35. “Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley
36. “A little progress each day adds up to big results.” – Author Unknown
37. “Courage means to keep making forward progress while you still feel afraid!” – Joyce Meyer
38. “Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.” – Robert Heinlein
39. “Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” – Ayn Rand
40. “Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.” – Gwendolyn Brooks
41. “Just because you aren’t making progress as fast as you think you should does not mean you aren’t making progress. Keep going.” – Anonymous
42. “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” – Nikola Tesla
43. “Change is not always progress. A fever of newness has everywhere been confused with the spirit of progress.” – Henry Ford
44. “Some quit due to slow progress. Never grasping the fact that slow progress is progress.” – Jeff Olson
45. “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
46. “Like the turtle, you need to stick your neck out to make progress.” – Anna Olson
47. “Remember that progress would be impossible if we always did things the way we always have.” – Wayne Dyer
48. “No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.” – Tony Robbins
49. “Progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.” – C.S Lewis
50. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass
51. “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
52. “The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.” – Bill Gates
53. “Always concentrate on how far you have come, rather than how far you have left to go. The difference in how easy it seems will amaze you.” – Heidi Johnson
54. “All progress is experimental.” – John Jay Chapman
55. “It is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition.” – Larry Page
56. “The only time you should ever look back is to see how far you’ve come.” – BTS, South Korean boy band
57. “No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.” – Sigmund Freud
58. “Kids react positively when praise follows positive effort and earned progress.” – Jacquie McTaggart
59. “Be not afraid of going slowly, be afraid only of standing still.” – Chinese proverb
60. “Push your boundaries beyond the ordinary; be that “extra” in “extraordinary.” – Roy T. Bennett
61. “It doesn't matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off! You cannot make progress without making decisions.” – Jim Rohn
62. “Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.” – Nicholas M. Butler
63. “And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.” – Kurt Vonnegut
64. “True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.” – Saint Francis de Sales
65. “It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
66. “Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” – Kofi Annan
67. “Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein
68. “There is no progress or accomplishment without sacrifice.” – Idowu Koyenikan
69. “To make progress, to reach towards our dreams, we need supporters, role models who are encouraging.” – Rebecca Jane
70. “Keep going, and don’t worry about your speed. You’re making progress, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Forward is forward, no matter how slow.” – Lori Deschene
Final Thoughts on Progress Quotes
That brings us to the end of our progress quotes compilation. We hope that they can provide you with some inspiration or fuel to keep trucking along and staying the course, even though it may not feel like you’re going anywhere.
Sometimes we have to take a step back and stop focusing on progress so much and more on recharging our batteries to come back even better, check out these 55 self-care day ideas to focus on yourself and do just that!
And if you want more inspirational quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 43 Moving Forward Quotes to Let Go of the Past
- 51 Quotes About Healing Your Body & Mind
- 35 Living Simple Quotes for an Uncomplicated Life
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
Tom Smith is a creative writer with over 6 years of professional experience. He discovered the joy of writing after covering some furniture in his childhood home with graffiti. In later years, he got himself a BA in creative writing and hasn’t looked back. After discovering the power of positive thinking and discovering the spiritual side of life, he believes it's a huge privilege to be able to write about all things personal development.
