melioristic

• “He is but a hubristic neophyte, a man clinging with fervor to long-discredited melioristic chimera and a man who is followed by throngs of frothy-mouthed, purblind acolytes, wishing to foment change yet knowing not even for what they cheer; to brand them Pollyannas is to demean and debase a harmless member of our lexicon.”

  Election Central Morning Roundup

• “Mr. Jacobs observes that, while revolutions usually self-destruct, the melioristic schemes of the 19th century – better sanitation and schooling – did improve things, and for this we should be grateful.”

  The Wall Street Journal: Paradise Lost, Again and Again

• “In this sense it paralleled the adoption of the melioristic social policies that helped to reshape the welfare and health systems, diminish poverty, and end discrimination.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Mad Among Us

• “Calvinist in their views on doctrine, and also in their melioristic vision of”

  Luther and English Apocalypticism: The Role of Luther in Three Seventeenth-Century Commentaries on the Book of Revelation

• “Even more consequential in raising doubt about the improvability of human nature through the melioristic change of the environment was Francis Galton who maintained, on the basis of genealogical data and a pioneer study of identical twins, that nature, not nur - ture, is the dominant force.”

  Dictionary of the History of Ideas

• “To some intellectual leaders the evolutionary theory suggested that what was called human nature had changed but little, and that in view of this it was futile to expect melioristic changes or the elimination of institutions deeply rooted in human nature.”

  Dictionary of the History of Ideas

• “Psychiatric work has undoubtedly intensified the hunger for a more objective and yet melioristic and really idealistic philosophical conception of reality, such as has been formulated in the modern concept of integration.”

  A Psychiatric Milestone Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921

• “Hence, against these two ways of accepting the universe, he maintains the pragmatic faith which is at once theistic, pluralistic, and melioristic.”

  Christianity and Ethics A Handbook of Christian Ethics

• “It is pluralistic, not monistic; melioristic, not optimistic.”

  Christianity and Ethics A Handbook of Christian Ethics

• “Between the two extremes of crude naturalism on the one hand and transcendental absolutism on the other, you may find that what I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism is exactly what you require.”

  Pragmatism

Show 10 more examples...