Historian Carr on " progress in human affairs "

Late last year, my friend brought back from London for me a 1990 Penguin reprint of historian E.H.Carr's famous book What is History? which was first published in 1961 (a year before I was born!) by Macmillan. It was indeed a pleasant surprise to see the book I used to read in 1984-1985 in Monash appearing in new and more colourful cover. Also, with the new technology of Google Image Search, I saw for the first time last year a picture of Carr (1892-1982).

Carr was also the author of some other books like the classics The Twenty Year Crisis, 1919-1939 - An Introduction to the Study of International Relations and The Bolshevik Revolution (in three volume). His most memorable quote is found in What is History? :

" Progress in human affairs, whether in science or in history or in society, has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests."