Branch Rickey Quotes

Baseball people are generally allergic to new ideas; it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms, and it is the hardest thing in the world to get Major League Baseball to change anything—even spikes on a new pair of shoes—but they will eventually...they are bound to.

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.

England is a slow moving country, reluctant to change—deeply reluctant to change.

Philly is a place where people love change as long as things stay the same for them.

People want to protect the territory that they have, and they're very threatened by change. That's not true for all of scientists, but you know, fortunately, the scientific community moves forward in a conservative fashion.

Seabeck is slow to change.

To the old, the new is usually bad news.

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

Keep yourselves to what is old, for that is good; our ancestors have proved it to be good; why should not we do as they did? New ideas [i.e. democracy, parliamentary reform] are now coming forward of which I do not nor ever shall approve. Mistrust these ideas and keep to the positive.

Courts and judges are very slow to change. They are reactive organizations.

New ideas seem like frightening ghosts to people at the beginning; they run away from them for a long time.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

With every new idea, it takes a generation or two until it becomes obvious that there's no real problem.

The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.

Now naturally, like many of us, I have a reluctance to change too much of the old ways.

Let a man proclaim a new principle. Public sentiment will surely be on the other side.

At the beginning of anything out of the ordinary, the mass of the people always dislike it.

Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however, ancient, can be trusted without proof. ... Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

I've experienced a lot of things in baseball, but I've never been traded during a strike. At least I know I'll be in a new uniform the next time I put one on.

The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again.

There is still nothing in life as constant and as changing at the same time as an afternoon at a ballpark.

There are occasions when I have moved boulders, but I'm reluctant to, especially ones that have been rooted in a place for many years.

Old custom is hard to break and scarce any man will be led otherwise than seemeth good unto himself.

In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses.