Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Every single change is fought by those who would be affected by it.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

The concept of active cooperation has taken the place of opposition to the new form of government and of dreamy resignation entranced with the beauty of times past.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

Don't accept the old order. Get rid of it.

If I had known how hard it would be to do something new, particularly in the payments industry, I would never have started PayPal. That's why nobody with long experience in banking had done it. You needed to be naive enough to think that new things could be done.

The way I see it, it's impossible to change things without encountering resistance.

In pursuing reform, we have to navigate uncharted waters. We may also have to confront protracted problems because we will have to shake up vested interests.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end.

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Posterity will give a man a fair hearing; his own times will not do so if he is attacking vested interests.

The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

Reform means difficulties. History moves often by leaps, then it moves slowly, because the resistance is organizing itself.

Anyone who is a leader for reform will accumulate enemies over time.

The way I look at the world is establishment versus change agents. The establishment is those people who want to keep things the way they are. Change agents are people like me.

There's always a little bit of friction when you're trying to democratize an industry.

Technology can be part of a solution, but it takes far more than software to usher in reform.

Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes.

The Latin American cause is about all a social cause: the rebirth of Latin America must start with the overthrow of its masters, country by country. We are entering times of rebellion and change. There are those who believe that destiny rests on the knees of the gods; but the truth is that it confronts the conscience of man with a burning challenge.

The reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.