Sigmund Freud Quotes

The danger to the state lies not in the intrusion of new thought but in the effort to stubbornly maintain the old state thought.

Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

There are people and interests that do not want change. It is not in their interest for this system to change.

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.

There are lazy minds as well as lazy bodies.

This doctrine ['that the condition of man cannot be ameliorated, that what has been must ever be, and that to secure ourselves where we are we must tread with awful reverence in the footsteps of our fathers']is the genuine fruit of the alliance between Church and State, the tenants of which finding themselves but too well in their present condition, oppose all advances which might unmask their usurpations and monopolies of honors, wealth and power, and fear every change as endangering the comforts they now hold.

The closed mind is a disease. You need to have an open mind; otherwise life will just pass you by.

I don't want to change. I haven't done it before, I won't do it now.

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates.

Businessmen go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot change.

The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.

They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.

Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.

Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can.

The man and the movement seemed 'reactionary' in my eyes. My common sense of justice, however, forced me to change this judgment in proportion as I had occasion to become acquainted with the man and his work; and slowly my fair judgment turned to unconcealed admiration. Today, more than ever, I regard this man as the greatest German mayor of all times.

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

They are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love change.

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.

Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness-lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.

I like neither new clothes nor new kinds of food.