Progress can do nothing but make the most of us all as we are, and that most would clearly not be enough even if those who are already raised out of the lowest abysses would allow the others a chance.
 George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903). copy citation

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Author George Bernard Shaw
Source Man and Superman
Topic progress chance
Date 1903
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3328/3328-h/3328-h.htm

Context

“My nurse was fond of remarking that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, and the more I see of the efforts of our churches and universities and literary sages to raise the mass above its own level, the more convinced I am that my nurse was right. Progress can do nothing but make the most of us all as we are, and that most would clearly not be enough even if those who are already raised out of the lowest abysses would allow the others a chance. The bubble of Heredity has been pricked: the certainty that acquirements are negligible as elements in practical heredity has demolished the hopes of the educationists as well as the terrors of the degeneracy mongers;” source