Neal Shusterman Quotes

Experience forced on men’s minds the conviction that what had ever been must ever be.

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

Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation perceive anything as true, or seek its own interest, in any manner but as its forefathers have opined and acted.

We, as a society, have become very fixed in our ideas of how things were, how they are, and how they should be.

Efforts to reform are often met with resistance because the system always tries to fall back to the status quo and what is comfortable.

Society in general maintains such a vested interested in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die - or kill - than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular.

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

I guess it's hard for people who are so used to things the way they are - even if they're bad - to change. 'Cause they kind of give up. And when they do, everybody kind of loses.

Never underestimate the magnitude of the power of the forces that reinforce the status quo.

The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.

The majority of people do not accept my choices.

I don't have any interest in changing a system, because the system will simply get bucked back by people who haven't changed.

The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.

Ninety-eight percent are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but pass?. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.

People will suffer almost anything, as long as it means they don't have to change.

I understand that change is frightening for people, especially if there's nothing to go to. It's best to stay where you are. I understand that.

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

A lot of people just capitulate and say, "Well, that's just the way things are." I think that can be deadly for creative people.

People.. especially people in positions of power.. have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently.

I think that the people who are the loudest about wanting to change you are the people with the least amount of vision and creativity.

There is very little point in trying to urge the world to mend its ways as long as that world is still convinced that its ways are perfectly adequate.