Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.
It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown.
We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.
There is an enormous inertia that prevents people from change. You must always remember that it is impossible to make something better if you don't make it different - the converse is not true, of course. You cannot make something better unless it is different. And different scares the life out of so many people.
Mental inertia is death.
A lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed. It doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes A lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
Prejudices subsist in people's imagination long after they have been destroyed by their experience.
Fundamental assumptions in general and scientific assumptions in particular are so hard to overturn because they are based on belief. Beliefs are so hard to overcome because they are irrational and therefore do not yield to logical argument.
The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.
People will suffer almost anything, as long as it means they don't have to change.
There are people whose clocks stop at a certain point in their lives.
The status quo is more tenacious than anyone would ever imagine. The human mind prefers continuity rather than change. So it really has to be committed to eliminating a bad habit to even start down that path.
It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it's not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.
. . . escape is easier than change.
The tragedy of life is that people do not change.
Thoughts and feelings are suspended in a vacuum unless they instigate and feed the selected actions, and it is the characters actions which reveal the character in the play.
It is easy to assume a habit; but when you try to cast it off, it will take skin and all.
Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature.
The habit patterns of the human mind are very strong and make it seem that the hard way is easy and the easy way is hard.
Matter is merely mind deadened by the development of habit to the point where the breaking up of these habits is very difficult.
I guess we resist changing, because we are afraid of change.
James Allen says 'We curse the effect and nourish the cause.' The guy puts sand in his shoes and he can hardly walk and you ask why would you do that? Why would we wish for it to change, hope for it to change, but all the while resisting change?
The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.
a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he's already got. He'll cling to trouble he's used to before he'll risk a change. Yes. A man will talk about how he'd like to escape from living folks. But it's the dead folks that do him the damage. It's the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and dont try to hold him, that he cant escape from.
