Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.
The most learned are often the most narrow minded.
Our political differences, no matter how sharply they are debated, are really quite narrow in comparison to the remarkably durable national consensus on our founding convictions.
If you're more interested in looking like a hipster, a jazz musician, or a young hunk, I'd recommend the pork pie. It has a narrow brim and a flat top.
Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow.
I think it's kind of difficult to write a good Christmas song because you have a narrow framework of references that you have to work within, and at the same time you want to do something that's personally original and hopefully somewhat unique.
Excessively narrow reading is unhelpful, certainly. Reading only Serious Literature is no better than reading only trash in this respect.
My fictitious characters will take the bit between their teeth and gallop off and do something that I hadn't counted on. However, I always insist on dragging them back to the straight and narrow.
American men, as a group, seem to be interested in only two things, money and breasts. It seems a very narrow outlook.
The child now shewed her a narrow and rugged descent, made by cutting the red clay and stones, of which the cliffs are here composed, into a sort of rude steps.
The limit is not as narrow as it might be. I do not claim for this action, as it now goes on, an ideal degree of efficiency. What I do claim is that this type of competition already reveals its nature and its ultimate power to hold seeming monopolies in check.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Over the years, I think I've matured in my spiritual evolution and development to understand a bit more than the narrow religious thinking - to move beyond that through a sort of perfection of the grandiose nature of the universe, and how perfect it is it in its sense and how satisfied we should all be in our place in that.
I missed the Olympic team in 1996 - missed making the team. I tried to make a comeback in my sport, and soon after the Olympic trials, Johann Olav Koss, who is a Norwegian speed-skater, called me up and asked me to be a part of Olympic Aid. Now Olympic Aid is Right to Play. It's a wonderful, narrow focus.
Ignorance and a narrow education lay the foundation of vice, and imitation and custom rear it up.
I understand personally that it is frustrating to lose presidential elections by narrow margins.
In cities like Athens, poor houses lined narrow and tortuous streets in spite of luxurious public buildings.
Having experienced everything you don't want in a partner over time, it starts to narrow down to what you actually do want.
If someone is a straight jazzhead, or a straight metalhead, or straight classical, they have a very narrow range of what they allow into their lives. But the people who listen to what we put out into the world have to be open-minded. Because we're so pluralist.
The leader must aim high, see big, judge widely, thus setting himself apart form the ordinary people who debate in narrow confines.
In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions.
Too many people hold a very narrow view of what motivates us. They believe that the only way to get us moving is with the jab of a stick or the promise of a carrot. But if you look at over 50 years of research on motivation, or simply scrutinize your own behavior, it's pretty clear human beings are more complicated than that.
War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.
The computer is a mechanism for acceleration: it accelerates economic activity, and this is eating up the world. It's eating up resources, it's processing, it's manufacturing, it's distributing, it's consuming. That's what the computer's real work does, and it does that 24/7, 365 days a year, non-stop, just to satisfy our own narrow needs.
Every fighter has a story that could break your heart. We lose, we get hurt and everything comes apart. That's when it's so difficult to stay on the straight and narrow.
For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.
There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.
Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.
Goodness knows the Republican electorate is a pretty narrow slice of the population.
It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Foreign policy can mean several things, not only foreign policy in the narrow sense. It can cover foreign policy, relations with the developing world, and enlargement as well.
For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity.
Tribulation will not hurt you, unless as it too often does; it hardens you and makes you sour, narrow and skeptical.
I think that, too many times, business has been seen as acting in its narrow self-interest rather than, essentially, contributing more broadly to society. I think a lot of that is unintentional; I don't think that many managers are deliberately trying to be unethical or are not trying to be sensitive to social needs.
The press secretary who starts to narrow down or close the president's options because he answers delicate negotiating questions no longer serves the president.
Why should a great and powerful nation like the United States allow its relationship with more than a billion Muslims around the world to be defined by the narrow hatred and nihilistic actions of an exceptionally small minority of Muslims?