Improvement

Inward improvements have a worth and dignity in themselves quite distinct from the power they give over outward things. ~ William Ellery Channing

That's how we continue on, and will improve our lot in life, solve the problems that arise. Partly out of necessity, partly out of this drive to improve. ~ Jonas Salk

Improvement is the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better, usually through some action intended to bring about that better state. The concept of improvement is important to individuals, as well as to governments and businesses.

Quotes

• Never will your striving for that which improves you and earns divine reward be wasted.
  • Ali ibn Abi-Talib, Ghurar al-hikam. Āmidī, ʻAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad (2012). Exalted aphorisms and pearls of speech: a translation of Ghurar al-hikam wa-durar al-kalim: a collection of aphorisms of Imam ʻAli ibn Abi Talib (1st ed.). Qum, Iran: Ansariyan Publications. p. 718. ISBN 9642192802. 

• Verily the person with the best lifestyle is one through whose life the lives of others are improved.
  • Ali ibn Abi-Talib, Ghurar al-hikam. Āmidī, ʻAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Muḥammad (2012). Exalted aphorisms and pearls of speech: a translation of Ghurar al-hikam wa-durar al-kalim: a collection of aphorisms of Imam ʻAli ibn Abi Talib (1st ed.). Qum, Iran: Ansariyan Publications. p. 1201. ISBN 9642192802. 

• There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
  • John Ashbery, International Herald Tribune (Paris, October 2, 1989) The Columbia World of Quotations, 1996.

• Men might be better if we better deemed
  Of them. The worst way to improve the world
  Is to condemn it.
  • Philip James Bailey, Festus (1872 edition) Scene IV, A Mountain; Sunrise. Compare: "The surest plan to make a man / Is to think him so", J. R. Lowell, Biglow Papers, II, ii. St. 9

• Inward improvements have a worth and dignity in themselves quite distinct from the power they give over outward things.
  • William Ellery Channing, “Self-Culture”

• Those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes.
  • Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949) Monthly Review [1] New York (May 1949)

• That's how we continue on, and will improve our lot in life, solve the problems that arise. Partly out of necessity, partly out of this drive to improve.
  • Jonas Salk, interview in San Diego, California (16 May 1991)

• I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul.
  • Socrates, Plato's account of the trial of Socrates in Apology. (Translated by Benjamin Jowett.) 30a–b

• For if you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censoring your lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.
  • Socrates, Plato's account of the trial of Socrates in Apology. (Translated by Benjamin Jowett.) 39c–d