Eugene McCarthy Quotes

Almost every witness that has been before this committee has opposed that reform which would affect his own industry.

The pendulum will swing back.

It follows that acceleration in the rate of change will result in an increasing need for reorganization. Reorganization is usually feared, because it means disturbance of the status quo, a potential threat to peoples vested interests in their jobs, and an upset to established ways of doing things. For these reasons, needed reorganization is often deferred. With a resulting loss in effectiveness and increase in costs.

Every profound new movement makes a great swing also backwards to some older, half-forgotten way of consciousness.

youth is always sure that change must mean something better.

Things fall apart, so they can fall together at a higher level of order.

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.

What is truly profound is thought to be stupid and trivial, or worse, boring, while what is actually stupid and trivial is thought to be profound. That is what it means to fly upside down.

Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.

'Conservation' (the conservation law) means this ... that there is a number, which you can calculate, at one moment-and as nature undergoes its multitude of changes, this number doesn't change. That is, if you calculate again, this quantity, it'll be the same as it was before. An example is the conservation of energy: there's a quantity that you can calculate according to a certain rule, and it comes out the same answer after, no matter what happens, happens.

The word "no" denotes a shutting of the door. It means failure, defeat, delay. But spell in backwards and take new hope, for backwards it spells "on."

Change isn't always good. Sometimes changing things is a terrible mistake.

If we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life.

Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.

You've tried to reform what will not learn. Shut doors on traits that you wish were dead; They will open a window and return.

[Barack Obama failed to sell a health care reform plan to American voters] because the utter implausibility of its central promise - expanded coverage at lower cost - led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes and more debt.

When politicians talk about immigration reform, they usually mean the following, amnesty, open borders, lower wages.

The altar cloth of one aeon is the doormat of the next.

Seth can get irritated/frustrated with Jane and me. This exerpt is from the private session of November 11, 1979: "... the same kind of reaction, however, are involved in all activities, and it is sometimes frustrating for me that you cannot perceive the fascinating facets of any event. You still - and I do not simply mean you two alone - do not feel the unsurpassable force that thoughts have. You do not understand that they do form events, that to change events you must first change thoughts. You get what you concentrate on."

If somebody prefers to work by means of sanctions, he is welcome to do so. But sanctions are a temporary measure. Firstly, they contradict the international law. Secondly, tell me where this policy of sanctions proved to be effective. The answer is nowhere.

How the past perishes is how the future becomes.

I am an old man and I have seen things get revoked. Things which looked very irrevocable.

We have history as a guide, and history suggests that this brand of comprehensive reform ... is a recipe for failure.

Going on means going far, going far means returning.