Samuel Butler Quotes

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

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

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

If you want to really change something, do not try to fight the existing reality. create a new reality.

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.

My job, as I've said, is to break down sectionalism, vested interests and a fixed mindset of merely following precedents, so that I'm not subjected to the harmful effects of factions.

The Jews' greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We're a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.

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

And I have a message for the liberals and the defenders of the status quo: we're just getting started.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

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.

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

Reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.

The price of doing the same old thing is higher than the price of change.

History shows us that the youth are usually a step ahead of their elders when change is required.

… all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

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.

The time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed. Now is the season for action ... I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.

The world we want to transform has already been worked on by history and is largely hollow. We must nevertheless be inventive enough to change it and build a new world.

If people are telling you that they don't believe what you're doing, that means you're doing something out of their comfort zone. And generally, people don't want to be taken out of their comfort zone because it's outside of the status quo.

The nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own.

Disobedience is the vehicle of progress.

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.