Tom Denning Quotes

An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.

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.

There is danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind conservatism.

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.

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

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

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

As beautiful as simplicity is, it can become a tradition that stands in the way of exploration.

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.

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.

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

Let me just say this - sometimes being a trailblazer is highly overrated.

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

I am a traditionalist, and I'm an innovator. Most of what I do is to weigh change and legislate to the best of my ability on what should change and what should not. Do I have a respect for tradition? Of course I do. Do I have a blind belief in it? No.

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

Idealists foolish enough to throw caution to the winds have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.

There are no pat answers - we're pushing through some new frontiers, and lessons of the past don't always apply.

Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.

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

You have to modernise; you have to change - you can't just be traditional for the fun of being traditional.

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Movement isn't progress.

The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.