Humanity is a race

Here are a few quotes I thought relevant following my previous post:

Humanity is a race between chaos and prosperity. -- (source?)

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. -- Thomas Paine

All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart Mill