Grace Hopper Quotes

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.

Tradition is laziness.

We get very set in our ways and it's sometimes hard to look beyond what else is out there.

Let me just say this - sometimes being a trailblazer is highly overrated.

I'm an optimist - that's why I try to invent different systems; otherwise, I may as well stop right now. Sometimes I get the feeling the French cinema holds on tightly to what exists already.

As beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.

Piety and virtue lie in obedience and conformity, while nothing is more repugnant than change and innovation.

…the burden of proof rests always upon the advocates of change.

Sometimes, when a tide starts to sweep, it makes no difference what the traditions are.

Those who govern us know it well, for they would sooner deny us bread than dare alter the observance of tradition.

Powerful imaginations are conservative.

To endeavor to rehabilitate the sabbath of our forefathers is as foolish as to try to make people go back into log houses and cook in a fire-place. Some persons can never realize that the world grows; that what was a help to one age becomes a hindrance to another; that time corrects the mistakes of men and that respect and reverence for our ancestors does not necessarily require us to adopt their clothes or their habits.

Sometimes we get comfortable with the status quo, even when the status quo isn’t any good.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

We impose the form of the old on the content of the new.

We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us.

It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

If we fix on the old, we get stuck.

The voices of conformity speak so loudly. Don't listen to them. No one does the right thing out of fear. If you ever utter the words, 'We've always done it that way,' I urge you to wash out your mouth with soap.

There is no new world that you make without the old world.

So often I heard people paying blind obeisance to change - as though it had some virtue of its own. Change or we will die. Change or we will stagnate. Evergreens don't stagnate.

The new is threatening to those who have mastered the old.

You can change the world. Please don't do that, OK? Some of us like the way things are going now.