Vladimir Putin Quotes

It's generally much easier to kill an organization than to change it substantially.

When you have a model that's worked very well, it's very hard to change.

There is nothing like proposals for intelligence reform to activate the anti-bodies of the affected agencies.

To some extent, it is [that] everybody is resistant to change. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody that was opposed to the smoking ban … All of Western Europe followed New York City. Many of the states around here did. Every major city, including in the tobacco-growing states in the United States, did. Brazil is smoke-free. Mexico City is smoke-free. All of France, Italy, Spain, England—they’re all smoke-free. It takes a while. Leadership is about doing what you think is right and then building a constituency behind it. It is not doing a poll and following from the back. If you want to criticize the political process—and it’s probably true throughout history, and certainly not just in the United States—I think it’s fair to say, in business or in government, an awful lot of leaders follow the polls.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

Systems don't change easily. Systems try to maintain themselves, and seek equilibrium. To change a system, you need to shake it up, disrupt the equilibrium. That often requires conflict.

Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything.

We do things much the same way as we did 50, 60 or even 70 years ago. The answers may not be wrong, but we haven't experimented to see whether they are or not.

We're going to build a wall. Donald Trump never said it's going to go from one end of the country, from the Gulf to the Pacific, and he'll use good judgment about that. And there are ways, through tax and regulation policies, that we can - and immigrant fees - that this could be paid for. I have not studied the details of it but, absolutely, I think that is possible.

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.

Competent people are the most resistant to change

The status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they've got is probably better than the risk and fear that come with change.

When you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress.

I worry that even those who want to reform are not quite sure how to go about it. There is so much to be done.

We must bear in mind, then, that there is nothing more difficult and dangerous, or more doubtful of success, than an attempt to introduce a new order of things in any state. For the innovator has for enemies all those who derived advantages from the old order of things, whilst those who expect to be benefited by the new institutions will be but lukewarm defenders.

The easier it is to do something, the harder it is to change the way you do it.

Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature, the result of what James O'Toole so aptly characterizes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.

I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change.

It is always easier to talk about change than to make it.

First of all, legally, it's hard to do these things[ get rid of ObamaCare]. Donald Trump needs a lot of competent people.

People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them.

People don't like change. But make the change fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.

Let me tell you, if Hillary Clinton's president of the United States, nothing's going to happen. It's just going to be talk.

The fundamental response to change is not logical, but emotional.