Edith Hamilton Quotes

Each generation's job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation's system of values for a new age.

Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.

Modernity is not a problem to be overcome but a challenge to be met.

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.

Every generation is more open to new things.

Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

Building the future holds more attraction than ancestor worship, whichever ancestor we're talking about.

I'm an optimist - that's why I try to invent different systems; otherwise, I may as well stop right now. Sometimes I get the feeling the French cinema holds on tightly to what exists already.

What really excites me in a project is when it goes in a way you haven't been before.

If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better.

Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's 'supposed' to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.

Do not be afraid to offer ideas that draw opposition. Remember, if no one is against your idea, then your idea probably doesn't do anything.

Even with, or perhaps, because of, this background, I have over the past few years sensed a very dramatic change in attitude on the part of Prince Edward Islanders towards the on-going rush for so-called modernization.

Nobody says you have to be shackled to tradition.

People always think that history proceeds in a straight line. It doesn't. Social attitudes don't change in a straight line. There's always a backlash against progressive ideas.

I have been constantly telling people to encourage people, to question the unquestioned and not to be ashamed to bring up new ideas, new processes to get things done.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

If you're not doing something different, you're not doing anything.

Leadership requires that we challenge the conventional wisdom.

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future.

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

The verdict of history ... is that worn out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.