If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there.

Generalisations only favour the killers.

[...] the only folks who kill black folks any more are black folks.

Nobody says any longer, “When will the killing stop?” Now we know that the killing will stop only when life itself stops.

As a society, we don't grow very much by killing someone who kills someone,

War is progress, peace is stagnation

Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules—and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress.

If there is progress then there is a novel.

Acknowledging progress isn't saying ‘we’re done’ or ‘we don’t need more’, and being gloomy doesn't make you a better person.

One of the fables we live by is that some day the killing will stop. If only we rid ourselves of Chinese, white men will have jobs and white women will have virtue, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Indians, we will fulfill our Manifest Destiny, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Canaanites, we will live in the Promised Land, and then we can stop killing. If only we rid ourselves of Jews, we can build and maintain a Thousand Year Reich, and then we can stop killing. If only we stop the Soviet Union, we can stop the killing (remember the Peace Dividend that never materialized?). If only we can take out the worldwide terrorist network of bin Laden and others like him. If only. But the killing never stops. Always a new enemy to be hated is found.

you can't say civilization dont advance, in every war they kill you in a new way

What is it to make progress in religion? Progress is not only action but moving onward. A door turning upon its hinges is in a state of motion, but it never advances. A chariot moving upon wheels is not only in motion, but goes onward. The conduct of some persons in religion resembles the former — there is action, but no advancement; they move, but it is on hinges, not on wheels.

The criterion of "progress" between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill.

Not all that we call progress is progress.