William Morris Quotes

Change is no threat to culture.

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.

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.

We want traditional change—not transformational change.

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 most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change.

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it.

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

The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

The American Dream can no more remain static than can the American nation.... We cannot any longer take an old approach to world problems. They aren't the same problems. It isn't the same world. We must not adopt the methods of our ancestors; instead, we must emulate that pioneer quality in our ancestors that made them attempt new methods for a New World.

Change is strong, but habit is strong too; and you cannot change the old for new, like a garment.

Most want progress but hardly anybody wants change. Change is almost always a little traumatic.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world..

I do think evolution is an important aspect of keeping a tradition alive. If it freezes and remains very static in its form, it dies, and so a natural evolution has to occur.

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

Change does not change tradition, it strengthens it. Change is a challenge and anopportunity, not a threat.

The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.To "see the light" too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.

A: Everything changes. B: But not enough.

We're going to have to change our traditions, our history.

There is no new world that you make without the old world.

This call for a new culture is not a new idea.

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.

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

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo.