50 Slow Progress Quotes for Steady Growth

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Published June 29, 2023

If you’re on a path of personal growth, these slow progress quotes are for you!

Slow progress refers to a gradual process of getting nearer to or achieving your goals.

Below, we have discussed the term slow progress as well as the pros and cons associated with it.

Please take a look at our list of slow progress quotes to find one that resonates with you!

Some Words about Slow Progress

Generally, we celebrate fast achievements and search for instant gratification.

So, it’s often hard for us to understand or accept the idea of slow progress.

However, embracing the concept of steady growth and gradual success would be beneficial for many reasons.

How Slow Progress Can Help Us Learn?

Although slow progress has numerous benefits, the most noteworthy include the insights and lessons from such a journey.

The world around us glorifies perfectionism, which means a person relying on slow progress won’t get a chance to survive.

However, this might not be the case in some cases.

This is so, as believing in your slow and steady progress can help you achieve constant and sustainable growth.

The time taken for us to develop a skill can help us gain strength through self-compassion and patience.

By taking each step slowly and carefully, we can allow ourselves to learn new ideas and refine our skills.

For instance, a gradual approach lets us gain the time to correct our course, evolve, and adapt to the prevailing conditions.

This gives us a creative approach and allows us to foster our resilience.

Pros and Cons of Slow Progress

It is essential to consider that the pros and cons of slow progress could vary depending on an individual’s goals, circumstances, and preferences.

However, when going through these pros and cons, it would help to have a better understanding of the slow progress.

Pros

It allows us to overcome the pressures of perfectionism.
We can have a deeper understanding of a particular skill or field.
Slow progress gives us enough time to learn and develop our resilience.
Slow progress can help build a strong foundation and ensure a good growth pattern.

Cons

Slow progress could sometimes result in frustration.
You can’t get immediate validation from external sources.
Slow progress tends to lower the motivation level of a person.
While progressing slowly, you might face the issue of missed opportunities.
The outcomes are delayed to a stage when they don’t make that much difference.

Top 10 Slow Progress Quotes

Let’s start with these top 10 best slow progress quotes!

1. “Life is a work in progress.” — Jeff Rich

2. “Life is short, and progress is slow.” — Gabriel Lippmann

3. “Progress takes time and discipline.” — Ronnie Coleman

4. “Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.” — Thor Heyerdahl

5. “Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.” — Jim Rohn

6. “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” — Marie Curie

7. “True progress quietly and persistently moves along without notice.” — Saint Francis de Sales

8. “Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.” — James Bryant Conant

9. “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” — Kahlil Gibran

10. “There is progress whether ye are going forward or backward! The thing is to move!” — Edgar Cayce

Slow Progress Quotes About Life

Below slow progress quotes are majorly related to life events that happen in general to everybody.

11. “It’s crazy how fast time flies and how things progress.” — Nathan Chen

12. “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” — Mahatma Gandhi

13. “Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.” — George Orwell

14. “Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below.” — Noam Chomsky

15. “If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” — Barack Obama

16. “Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

17. “Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.” — Nipsey Hussle

18. “Don’t look too far into the future; just look at tomorrow. One day at a time. Can you win tomorrow? Can you make progress? The answer is yes, you have a choice, and tomorrow you’re going to win.” — Joe Wicks

19. “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

20. “Through a long and painful process, I’ve learned that happiness is an inside job – not based on anything or anyone in the outer material world. I’ve become a different and better person – not perfect, but still a work in progress.” — Alana Stewart

Progress Quotes on Change and Perseverance

These quotes reflect the need for perseverance and how progress can change things.

21. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Frederick Douglass

22. “A static hero is a public liability. Progress grows out of motion.” — Richard E. Byrd

23. “The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.” — Voltaire

24. “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” — Albert Einstein

25. “The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” — Alfred North Whitehead

26. “Progress comes to those who train and train; reliance on secret techniques will get you nowhere.” — Morihei Ueshiba

27. “When a writer declares that his first book is his best, that is bad. I progress successively from book to book.” — Mahmoud Darwish

28. “Everybody’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress. I mean, I’ve never arrived… I’m still learning all the time.” — Renee Fleming

29. “The Chinese people are a great people; they are industrious and brave, and they never pause in the pursuit of progress.” — Xi Jinping

30. “Progress, of the best kind, is comparatively slow. Great results cannot be achieved at once, and we must be satisfied to advance in life as we walk, step by step.” — Samuel Smiles

Slow Progress Quotes Related to Growth

Here are slow progress quotes on growth and advancement.

31. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius

32. “If you take an hour out of your day to meditate, you will progress ten-fold.” — Shannon Elizabeth

33. “One of the remarkable things about my career is that it has been marked by steady, incremental progress.” — Phil Hartman

34. “Who I am, what I am, is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, a lifetime of stories. And there are still so many more books to read. I’m a work in progress.” — Sarah Addison Allen

35. “I think every high school student who was alert during the early ’60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.” — P. J. O’Rourke

36.“When we make progress and get better at something, it is inherently motivating.” — Daniel H. Pink

37. “But with the slow menace of a glacier, depression came on. No one had any measure of its progress; no one had any plan for stopping it.” — Frances Perkins

38. “Progress in human affairs is more often a pull than a push, surging forward of the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren slowly and painfully to his vantage ground.” — W. E. B. Du Bois

39. “School integration did not come to be the day after the Brown ruling was issued. Progress took years, and it took passion, strength, and courage from a large group of committed individuals.” — Donna Brazile

40. “Your brain – every brain – is a work in progress. It is ‘plastic.’ From the day we’re born to the day we die, it continuously revises and remodels, improving or slowly declining, as a function of how we use it.” — Michael Merzenich

More Slow Progress Quotes

Below are a few more quotes related to slow progress quotes for your enjoyment.

41. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” — John Heywood

42. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” — Sam Levenson

43. “Small steps can lead to big accomplishments.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

44. “A person who makes few mistakes makes little progress.” — Bryant H. McGill

45. “Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.” — Robert Collier

46. “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.” — Walter Elliot

47. “Do a little bit more than average, and from that point on, our progress multiplies itself out of all proportion to the effort put in.” — Paul J. Meyer

48. “The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneath the oppressions of his age.” — John Jay Chapman

49. “Happy are those few nations that have not waited till the slow succession of human vicissitudes should, from the extremity of evil, produce a transition to good; but by prudent laws have facilitated the progress from one to the other!” — Cesare Beccaria

50. “I have been learning English on the road since I started when I was 15, so it is a slow process, but making some progress. Now I think I am much more comfortable with my English. However, it is difficult, still, when I speak about something that is not tennis.” — Rafael Nadal