phrases

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."

"Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counter-revolutionaries and advocates of the status quo."

"Isn’t it generally quite easy to identify your short-term interests when the status quo is to your benefit? In such circumstances, you favor the status quo!"

"Satisfied powers are those that have reached the top of the pecking order, are happy with their lot, and are primarily interested in preserving the status quo. In contrast, rising powers are states on the move. They are not satisfied with their lot, are usually struggling for recognition and influence, and are therefore looking for ways to overturn the status quo."

"This is true for any society, whether the power structure is religious, military, socialist, capitalist, communist, fascist, or tribal. The leaders will attempt to hold back change. Sometimes, even when conditions are terrible for the majority of people, the people themselves may resist change because there is comfort in the familiar."

"Yet at every turn, vested interests (those who have the most to gain in keeping things the way they are) oppose even technological changes."

"Although we accept the inevitability of change, humans meet it with a lot of resistance. In most cases, change threatens those in positions of advantage and for the most part they are there in the first place to keep things the way they are."

"Any number of volumes could be written on the hardships endured by those who sought change that threatened the status quo."

"Many forward-thinking people have been locked up and even executed for saying such things as the earth wasn’t the center of the universe. Those who fought for social justice and change had even greater difficulties."

"Remember that almost every new concept was ridiculed, rejected, and laughed at when first presented, especially by the experts of the time. That’s what happened to the first scientists who said the earth was round, the first who said it went around the sun, and the first who thought people could learn to fly. You could write a whole book, and many have, just on things that people thought were impossible up until the time they happened."

"I would rather sit with the rural poor, the desperate children of urban blight, the victims of racism, and working people seeking a better life than with those whose religion is the status quo, whose goal is profit and whose hearts are cold."

"I omit from consideration here the fact that people who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral, but in favor of the status quo."

"Habit with him was all the test of truth, It must be right: I’ve done it from my youth."

"As the generalization goes about the art industry, people can be really challenging and thought-provoking in their thinking and questioning the status quo, and it's really important that the status quo can be questioned and that there are people doing that."

"When a new idea is advanced, it necessarily challenges the previous idea. This disturbs the holders of the previous idea and threatens their security. The normal reaction is anger. The new idea is then attacked, and support of it is required to be of a high order of certainty. The greater the departure from the previous idea, the greater the degree of certainty required, so it is said. I have never been able to accept this. It assumes that the old order was established on high orders of proof, and on examination this is seldom found to be true."

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. (Weil die Dinge sind, wie sie sind, werden die Dinge nicht so bleiben wie sie sind.)"

"Young entrepreneurs tend to be fearless and have no respect for the status quo, and that’s exactly what you need in an environment where the status quo is going to put you out of business."

"Ignorance — as a function of the system justifying tendencies it may activate—may, ironically, breed more ignorance. In the contexts of energy, environmental, and economic issues, the authors present 5 studies that (a) provide evidence for this... and... illustrate the unfortunate consequences of this process for individual action in those contexts that may need it most."

"Change tends to fill people with this incredible fear."

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better.""

"Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise."

"It is revolting to have no better reasons for a law than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past."

"Better values, ideals, and behavior cannot be fully realized while there is still hunger, unemployment, deprivation, war, and poverty."

"This is not human nature but a byproduct of the culture. What is considered appropriate behavior today may be considered un-sane in the future."

"People raised in a monetary system where the bottom line is profit are likely to outsource portions of their business rather than be concerned with the well-being of their country and employees. The nature of our social institutions perpetuates this behavior. For example, if a moderate sized company were concerned with the well-being of employees and provided medical care, playgrounds for children, and a higher wage scale, it would not attract as many investors."

"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of Our Lives."

"While it is well enough to leave footprints on the sands of time, it is even more important to make sure they point in a commendable direction."

"Surely in a matter of this kind we should endeavor to do something, that we may say that we have not lived in vain, that we may leave some impress of ourselves on the sands of time."

"Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time"

"The right of individual possession is that the individual is in a way a steward of his property on behalf of society; his tenure of property is more of a duty than an actual right of possession. ... The condition on which this right must stand is that of wisdom in the disposal; if the disposal of property is foolish, then the ruler or society may withdraw this right of disposal. ... The right of disposal depends on being mature and being able to fulfill one's duties; when the possessor does not meet these requirements, then the natural fruits of ownership come to an end."

"Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuens. Iurisprudentia est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, iusti atque iniusti scientia."

"Καὶ ποῖον, λέγει, ἀδικῶ, μὲ τὸ νὰ κρατῶ γιὰ τoν ἐαυτόν μου αὐτὰ ποῦ μου ἀνήκουν; Ποία, εἰπέ μου, εἶναι αὐτὰ ποῦ σου ἀνήκουν; Ἀπὸ ποῦ τὰ ἔλαβες, καὶ τὰ ἔφερες στὴν ζωὴν αὐτήν; Ὅπως ἀκριβῶς κάποιος ποὺ εὑρίσκει στὸ θέατρο θέση μὲ καλὴν θέαν, ἐμποδίζει ἔπειτα τοὺς εἰσερχομένους, θεωρώντας ὡς ἰδικὸ τοῦ αὐτὸ ποὺ προορίζεται γιὰ χρῆσιν κοινήν, ἔτσι εἶναι καὶ οἱ πλούσιοι. Ἀφοῦ ἐκυρίευσαν ἐκ τῶν προτέρων τα κοινὰ ἀγαθά, τὰ ἰδιοποιοῦνται ἁπλῶς ἐπειδὴ τὰ ἐπρόλαβαν. Ἐὰν ὁ καθένας ἐκρατοῦσε ἐκεῖνο ποὺ ἀρκεῖ γιὰ τὴν ἱκανοποίηση τῶν ἀναγκῶν του, καὶ ἄφηνε τὸ περίσσευμα σ’ αὐτὸν ποὺ τὸ χρειάζεται, κανεὶς δὲν θὰ ἦταν πλούσιος, ἀλλὰ καὶ κανεὶς πτωχός."

"Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno."

"Justitia suum cuique distribuit."

"Honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere."

"Quot homines tot sententiae: suus cuique mos."

"Suum cuique decus posteritas rependet."

"Let's go back to our point of departure: the contested issues of freedom and rights, hence sovereignty, insofar as it's to be valued. Do they inhere in persons of flesh and blood or … in abstract constructions like corporations, or capital, or states? In the past century the idea that such entities have special rights, over and above persons, has been strongly advocated. The most prominent examples are Bolshevism, fascism, and private corporatism… Two of these systems have collapsed. The third is alive and flourishing under the banner TINA—There Is No Alternative to the emerging system of state corporate mercantilism disguised with various mantras like globalization and free trade."

"The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing meaning: the people in one part of an organization do not know what the people in another part are doing and this is causing confusion or difficulties"

"Everything old is new again meaning: "you can't do anything unique, because it's been done before" or "the material you just discovered and loved has been around for ages""

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it meaning: If something is working adequately well, leave it alone"

"Live and let live meaning: a person should live as he or she chooses and let other people do the same"

"Screw the pooch -"

"The cat's out of the bag meaning: The secret has been given away"

"The pot calling the kettle black -"

"Water under the bridge meaning: Something happened in the past and is no longer important or worth arguing about"

"In the 1970s I even got to meet Kurt Gödel a few times. The king of the logicians. Gödel once told me, “The a priori is very powerful.” By this he meant that pure logic can take you farther than you might believe possible."

"As an interpreter of nature... Leibnitz stands in no comparison with Newton. His general views in physics were vague and unsatisfactory; he had no great value for inductive reasoning; it was not the way of arriving at truth which he was accustomed to take; and hence, to the greatest physical discovery of that age, and that which was established by the most ample induction, the existence of gravity as a fact in which all bodies agree, he was always incredulous, because no proof of it, a priori could be given."

"The only justification for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am convinced that the philosophers have had a harmful effect upon the progress of scientific thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism, where they are under our control, to the intangible heights of the a priori. For even if it should appear that the universe of ideas cannot be deduced from experience by logical means, but is, in a sense, a creation of the human mind, without which no science is possible, nevertheless this universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our experiences as clothes are of the form of the human body. This is particularly true of our concepts of time and space, which physicists have been obliged by the facts to bring down from the Olympus of the a priori in order to adjust them and put them in a serviceable condition."

"Up to this point we have restricted our attention to space as a mere extension. But space, as understood in common practice, implies considerably more: it represents a three-dimensional Euclidean continuum. When thus particularised, Kant's arguments as to its a priori character are no longer tenable in the light of modern discovery; and we must assume that this special form we credit to space arises entirely from our co-ordination of sense impressions conducted in the simplest way possible. On no account may we consider three-dimensional Euclidean space to be imposed a priori either by sensibility or by the understanding. ...it is generally conceded by scientists that the a priori doctrine of three-dimensional Euclidean space is one of the most pernicious teachings that philosophy has ever attempted to impose upon science. ... These views on space as professed by the greatest scientists are in large measure to be attributed to the discoveries of non-Euclidean geometry supplemented by the investigations of the psychophysicists. ...By the time men are of an age to philosophise, they have been subjected for so many years to beliefs based on inferences from experience, that the beliefs have remained, whereas the inferences, owing to the monotony of their repetition, have become second nature and appear intuitive. ... Were three-dimensional Euclidean space an a priori condition of the understanding, it would have been quite impossible for mathematicians to wend their way through the non-Euclidean hyperspaces of relativity. Neither can three-dimensional space be considered to be imposed by sensibility, since, as Poincaré tells us, after a certain amount of perseverance, he was aided to a considerable degree by sensibility when investigating the problems of Analysis Situs of four dimensions."