Graham Hancock Quotes

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

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

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.

New ideas are difficult just because they are new. Repetition has somehow plastered over the gaps and inconsistencies in the old ones, and the new cannot penetrate.

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.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

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.

Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.

Initially, new ideas are rejected. Later they become dogma if you're right. And if you're really lucky, you can publish your rejections as part of your Nobel presentation.

The greatest achievements of the human mind are generally received with distrust.

When you talk about change, you know what makes it really tough for people is on the one hand you've got tradition, and on the other hand you've got change; in many people's mind, change equals modernization. Tradition, however. I'm a big tradition guy.

In science, it is rare that a transformational change occurs during our lifetimes.

There is resistance to change. There's a resistance to ideas.

People resist change; if they like something, then they want you to keep doing it over and over - but I think if you like what a particular band or artist does, then you should want to see what they're going to do next.

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

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.

If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.

Mainstream science starts as heresy.

There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take. If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades.

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

We [Republicans] don’t need any new ideas.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.