Edmund Wilson Quotes

The reality is, some people don't want you to change or go anywhere different.

France has chosen to ignore the great transformation of the 21st century and cultivate a [culture of] status quo and rigidity.

Nobody wants to change.

Those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.

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

People don't make changes because things are wonderful.

The tendency is to keep doing things the way you have done them.

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

Change occurs in direct proportion to dissatisfaction, but dissatisfaction never changes.

Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.

Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.

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

Rule, and change nothing.

I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

There is danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind conservatism.

Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one.

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

Folks will always, always, always go back to the comfortable status quo, with its silent voices and lack of conflict, if you give them the chance.

When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.

. . . escape is easier than change.

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.

One of the useful things about age is realizing conventional wisdom is often simply inertia with a candy coating of conformity.