Daily Inspiration Quote by Daniel D. Palmer

“Excelsior” is a word with a built-in drumbeat: Latin for “ever upward,” it’s the kind of motto that wants to be carved into stone, slapped onto banners, turned into destiny. Palmer undercuts that heroic sheen with a quiet qualifier: “but only step by step.” The line works because it refuses the two most seductive lies of self-improvement culture at once: that progress is guaranteed, and that it’s supposed to be dramatic.

Palmer wasn’t a pop idol in the modern sense so much as a founder-brand, the kind of 19th-century figure who turned an idea (in his case, chiropractic) into a public identity. In that context, “higher and higher” reads like sales copy for a movement trying to legitimate itself in a skeptical medical marketplace. Yet “step by step” is the inoculation against hype. It signals patience, method, and incremental proof - a rhetorical strategy for someone selling an alternative practice that needed to look disciplined, not delirious.

The subtext is almost managerial: ambition is fine, even necessary, but it must be domesticated into process. It’s a motto for people building institutions, not just chasing personal glow-ups. There’s also a subtle moral claim: real ascent is earned, not manifested. By pairing a soaring, quasi-religious aspiration with the plodding mechanics of steps, Palmer turns uplift into work, and makes perseverance sound less like inspiration and more like instruction.