Quotes About Change

Explanations of the stability of technologies must take account of the social relations of work as

You're too old for this type of living,' he told

I dread the beginning of her new life more than words can tell, but I see some hope for her if she travels - none if she remains at home.

To-day we love, what to-morrow we hate.

I constantly see old people flushed and excited by the prospect of some anticipated pleasure which altogether fails to ruffle the tranquillity of their serene grandchildren. Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and girls now as our seniors were in their time? Has the great advance in education taken rather too long a stride;

When things are at the worst, they're sure to mend. Things can't be much worse, Mr. Franklin, than they are now.

Does it matter who we are, or what we keep or lose?

One of our first amusements as children (if we have any imagination at all) is to get out of our own characters, and to try the characters of other personages as a change—to be fairies, to be queens, to be anything, in short, but what we really are.

Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it—perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race.

Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it -perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts.

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lie steady under our hands.

By 1911 I found it impossible to continue my pretenses to orthodoxy;

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

One] of the fundamental principles of statesmanship: to persuade radicals that change must be gradual in order to be permanent, and to persuade conservatives that change must be.

Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith that is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world—knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at—well; if not—well also; though not so well.

the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil; and when the advantage of change is small, some defects whether in the law or in the ruler had better be met with philosophic toleration. The citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by acquiring the habit of disobedience.

The moment man begins to take thought of the morrow he passes out of the Garden of Eden into the vale of anxiety; the pale cast of worry settles down upon him, greed is sharpened, property begins, and the good cheer of the "thoughtless" native disappears.

When Germany defeated Napoleon it was a disastrous to culture as when Luther defeated the Church.

When a man is interested in the past he writes history; when he is interested in the future he makes it.

Social evolution is an interplay of custom with origination.

life must breed.