Thomas Reed Quotes

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

Everybody believes in innovation until they see it. Then they think, 'Oh, no; that'll never work. It's too different.'

Baseball people, and that includes myself, are slow to change and accept new ideas. I remember that it took years to persuade them to put numbers on uniforms.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

Innovation is hard. It really is. Because most people don't get it. Remember, the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, these were all considered toys at their introduction because they had no constituency. They were too new.

An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out.

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.

I saw that there are people who will connive against innovation. They're hostile to it. And that has shaped my behavior ever since.

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

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common

Every new theory encounters opposition and rejection at first. The adherents of the old, accepted doctrine object to the new theory, refuse it recognition, and declare it to be mistaken. Years, even decades, must pass before it succeeds in supplanting the old one. A new generation must grow up before its victory is decisive.

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts.

Idea-assassins rush forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd.

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance.

It's always difficult when you want to do something really new, and you also want it to reach the masses, because the majority of people want to see what they've already seen before, or that they're already familiar with. To open the majority of peoples' minds to something new is difficult.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

In science novelty emerges only with difficulty, manifested by resistance, against a background provided by expectation.

Every original idea is first ridiculed, then vigorously attacked, and finally taken for granted.

Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation.

New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled the humiliating question arises 'Why then are you not taking part in them?

The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.

Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

Science has often resisted new ideas and fought bitterly to prevent them coming on board.

I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.