Progress PDF Print E-mail
Written by Fethullah Gülen   
2006.05.30

A nation's development and progress depends upon the intellectual and spiritual training given to the people who live within its borders. A nation whose members are lacking in intellectual and spiritual development should not be expected to develop and progress.

Nations begin to move backward when they allow once-cultivated fields to be neglected, and turn vineyards and gardens into rubbish heaps. Fertilizing barren soil and then cultivating it so that it becomes a vineyard and a garden is progress. A developed country's lands consist of gardens, its mountains have vineyards, and its places of worship are like magnificent palaces. In contrast, the cities of an underdeveloped country are ruins, its streets are rubbish heaps, and its places of worship are left to decay as moldy halls.

When something has been improved, it becomes cleaner and brighter, better and more orderly than it formerly was. Accordingly, being content with things as they are indicates a lack of effort, while true progress is the realization of improvements.

Each advance forward appears first as a concept. Then, the mass of people are persuaded to accept it. Finally, it is put into practice by those united in heart and mind. Every attempt to make progress that is not based on reason and science is futile.

It is a condition for national development that the nation's people have the same goal. A nation cannot develop and progress, although it shows great activity, if some of its members say "black" and others say "white" for the same thing.

A community that has not educated its people in a shared tradition eventually splits into different groups based on their different knowledge and upbringing. These groups will be hostile to each other. It is impossibly difficult for such a fractured community to progress.

Although education is undeniably important for a country's development, the expected results will never be achieved if the young people are not educated according to the country's traditional values.

For true and beneficial progress to me made, people must evaluate the present conditions and use the experience of former generations intelligently. If coming generations do not learn from the experience of their predecessors, and each generation follows its own way, the nation will begin to move backward instead of forward.

Comments
Add New Search
Write comment
Name:
Email:
 
Title:
 
Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

Last Updated ( 2008.01.11 )
 

Reunion with Ourselves

The twentieth century was a century of incessant problems and the present continues to be the same. One of those problems is so very deep that it makes us forget all others; it is chronic and resistant to intervention and...Read More

The World Awaited

When we ponder great historical events we can see that thought and action live within one another, that they are interlaced in togetherness; action is, on the one side, planned and fed by thought, while on the other side...Read More

The Statue of Our Souls

The person who equips and improves their heart with faith in God and knowledge of Him in proportion to that faith and knowledge, feels a profound affection and a vast love for all human beings and in fact for all creation...Read More