Paul Valery Quotes

Mental inertia is death.

Nothing is more tragic - or more common - than mental inertia.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

When we’ve ceased hearing or changing, we need a new environment.

What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

The reality is, some people don't want you to change or go anywhere different.

It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.

At some point, life starts to pass you by and becomes about avoidance. I want to stay clear from that situation, because I don't like that.

I've always believed that if you don't stay moving, they will throw dirt on you.

Awareness without action is worthless.

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

So easy to fall into a rut, isn't it? Why should ruts be so comfortable and so unpopular?

The longer you're stuck in a position that doesn't truly challenge you, the less likely you'll be able to leave it. Inertia, in fact, is one of my worst fears.

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the U.S.A. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory.

We walk ourselves into ruts so deep we cannot see over them.

Sometimes we get comfortable with the status quo, even when the status quo isn’t any good.

Nobody wants to change.

When someone doesn't react to changes, the changes turn against him.

Being complacent was never going to teach us anything.

Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth, routine, stupidity, - forcing their way in like wind through the shutters, seeping into the cellar like swamp water.

Resistance to unwanted circumstances has the power to keep those circumstances alive and well for a very long time.

Sometimes, the hardest habit to break is the habit of doing nothing beyond the necessary.

People are satisfied with making minor upgrades and tweaking things here and there - as long as that's the landscape, it will keep on happening. I don't see a problem necessarily, but at the same time it is nice to see new things come.

He who moves not forward, goes backward.

People are like bicycles. They can keep their balance only as long as they keep moving.