Leadership Quote by Nick Clooney

Progress is one of our favorite bedtime stories: soothing, linear, and conveniently flattering to whoever happens to be alive right now. Nick Clooney’s line punctures that comfort with a gentle blade. “We like to believe” is doing the real work. It frames optimism not as evidence-based conviction but as preference - a chosen narrative that helps us get through the day and justify the systems we’re invested in. The phrase turns “improving” from a measurable claim into a psychological need.

The subtext is political in the most pragmatic sense: societies run on consent, and consent is easier to secure when people feel history is on their side. If the human condition is “improving,” then today’s hardships become tolerable, tomorrow’s fixes feel inevitable, and accountability can be postponed. The line hints at a public that confuses new gadgets, expanded rights, or rising GDP with moral advancement, as if innovation automatically upgrades empathy.

Context matters because Clooney is speaking from within the machinery that sells progress: campaigns, civic speeches, legacy-making. By locating improvement “in our lifetime,” he exposes the ego tucked inside modern optimism. We don’t just want humanity to get better; we want the credit, or at least the reassurance that we’re living in the chapter where things turn around.

It’s not nihilism. It’s a warning about self-deception: if improvement is primarily something we “like to believe,” then progress isn’t a trend line - it’s a political project that can stall, reverse, or be taken away while we’re busy admiring the story.