Henry George Quotes

The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo.

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

What is the argument on the other side? Only this, that no case has been found in which it has been done before. That argument does not appeal to me in the least. If we never do anything which has not been done before, we shall never get anywhere. The law will stand still whilst the rest of the world goes on; and that will be bad for both.

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.

So often I heard people paying blind obeisance to change - as though it had some virtue of its own. Change or we will die. Change or we will stagnate. Evergreens don't stagnate.

There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.

What's dangerous is not to evolve.

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

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

The move to modernity has its risks but the greater risk is not moving at all.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

Leaders must go ahead even when moving ahead is controversial. You must be ahead of time, because if you want to represent the status quo, what do you need leaders for?

Instead of embracing change, the E.U.'s precautionary principle has held back progress.

I'm in favor of progress; it's change I don't like.

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

The first rule of survival is clear: Nothing is more dangerous than yesterday's success.

You can change the world. Please don't do that, OK? Some of us like the way things are going now.

Change is a great and horrible thing, and people love it or hate it at the same time. Without change, however, you just don't move.

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.

There's always a risk if you don't do things the way you've done things before.

There's a real danger in trying to stay king of the mountain. You stop taking risks, you stop being as creative, because you're trying to maintain a position. Apart from anything else that really takes the fun out of it.

All adventure is now reactionary.