Glenn Gould Quotes

One of my biggest sources of angst is having people so comfortable with a formula that works that they are not challenging themselves or their ideas.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.

The tendency is to keep doing things the way you have done them.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.

Any time you're stepping out on a limb as an artist, it's scary, especially when you have a lot of success. When you're reaching a lot of people, the masses, it's easy to stay in that niche, you know? Especially when you're making a lot of money and you know there's a formula, it's easy to stay in that rut.

'Salaryitis' is when you become so accustomed to that salary that you no longer have the gumption to pull out of the rut and strike out on your own. It destroys the nerve of ambitious, imaginative men, and bowing to it has meant sure defeat for more people than any other sickness, mental or physical.

The danger in playing a piece over and over again lies in getting stuck in a rut where you don't ask questions anymore and you always play it the same way.

I think you find stories with fresh perspectives, and there can be a danger in the opposite way when you start getting too cynical and things just don't start seeming like stories, and things don't seem exciting anymore. It's like, 'Yep, this is my fourth caucus, and I know everybody and know everything and I am writing just to impress my friends.'

Many of us stay in situations that don't serve us because we don't want to confront the fact that we've failed.

We tend to default to complacency. Stick to the easy option. We all do it. We've tried to create a business model and society around us that is as easy and boxed as possible. We love creating boundaries and borders.

Those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.

Comfort can be a dangerous thing. You stick around home all the time where it’s safe and nothing ever changes, and before you know it, you get set in your ways and you quit learning, you quit changing, you don’t grow anymore.

There are always a lot of people so afraid of rocking the boat that they stop rowing. We can never get ahead that way.

Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and woman who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will least forever or else are so frightened it won't, that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

When we are constantly recreating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh grass. Instead, we wrap ourselves in our own dark environment, where our only companion is the smell of our own sweat. In the cocoon, there is no dance, no walking or breathing. It is comfortable and sleepy, an intense and very familiar home.

Tradition is laziness.

Marriage must perforce fight against the all-devouring monster of habit.

If you don't keep pushing the limits, you wake up one day and you're the "center square to block."

The whole nostalgia thing, and just sticking with what you always liked and what you know and not taking a chance on something or expanding. I think especially after a certain age.

Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.