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About this quote

What does it mean?
Human progress and understanding happen gradually over long periods.
In plain terms
The way people think and learn moves very slowly.
What can you take from it?
Patience is needed for societal or personal growth.

Where it applies

  • education reform
  • social change
  • personal habits

Putting it to work

  • set long-term goals
  • practice patience
  • track incremental progress

Questions to consider

  • Are you patient enough for slow progress?
  • What change feels too slow for you?

Another view

Some critical changes can happen rapidly during crises or breakthroughs.

More from Edmund Burke

  1. It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

    Permalink to quote #74

  2. Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.

    Permalink to quote #76

  3. It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up a…

    Permalink to quote #73

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