A. S. Byatt Quotes

People don't want novelty - they want the reassurance of familiarity. No-one wants to be challenged, no-one wants to have their minds blown. There is an insatiable appetite for affirmation.

I think that human nature is scared of change and justifies it in all sort of ways.

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

a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.

It's the nature of the beast within us to keep going back to the familiar rather than to strap on faith and face the future.

People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.

Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar.

And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

Because the fundamental human problem is that people are afraid of change.

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

What is familiar tends to become a value.

You get so used to a world that you complain, but never actually want anything different. Why crave the unfamiliar?

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.

So many people prefer to live in drama because it's comfortable. It's like someone staying in a bad marriage or relationship - it's actually easier to stay because they know what to expect every day, versus leaving and not knowing what to expect.

I have a resistance to change in things that I feel comfortable with and that I'm used to.

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

Tradition" is very often an excuse word for people who don't want to change.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

We're all shocked by new ideas, and we're less shocked when we hear them again. And less shocked when we hear them a third time.

I think we stick with what we know.

I'm a creature of habit. I don't really like change.

I stick to what got me here and what I know best. That's the same routine. I'm not going to vary it.

You get used to a certain thing, and you don't want to change. Because that's what's worked for you.

You don't trade in the devil you know for the one you don't know.