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A

Anonymous

Oct 26, 2024

What is the meaning of “progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged”?

Dolores Umbridge made the statement, "Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged," during her inaugural speech as the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Could you explain the meaning of this statement?

3 Answers

A
Anonymous

Jan 18, 2025

It means that doing something that is un-necessary for the sake of making it appear that you are doing something is pointless.

We have a saying ‘If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.’

What Prof. Umbridge meant by this is that progressing – moving forward by studying magic with magic – just for the sake of progressing – moving forward, evolving, getting better at magic – must be discouraged. In other words, don’t study magic to be better wizards just because you can be better wizards. It’s deeper meaning was to keep the children at Hogwart’s from learning any more magic that would make them better – or challenging – wizards, because no one should be better than the best at present. If the children grow to be better than their parents, they will overtake their parents.

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