Stephen Colbert Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…the burden of proof rests always upon the advocates of change.

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

Nobody wants to change.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

They all overvalued the importance of stability.

It's uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.

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.

Ninety-eight percent are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.

Those who don't want to change, let them sleep.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

I'm all for prosperity. It's change I object to.

We have conferred a mystic popularity upon officials whose only virtue is their timidity; while our scorn of rebels and reformers is so great that we have ceased to persecute them. The capitals and governments of the world are in the hands of caution; and change comes over them only in the night, unseen.

Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.

How will the world change if we do not question it?

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

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

The tendency is to keep doing things the way you have done them.