Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

A new truth is a truth, an old error is an error.

The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.

If you don't hop aboard the change train, you're gonna get derailed.

You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

Falsehoods which we spurn to-day Were the truths of long ago.

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.

A new truth always has to conend with many difficulties. If it were not so, it would have been discovered much sooner.

I fear there will be no future for those who do not change.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

Science can never be a closed book. It is like a tree, ever growing, ever reaching new heights. Occasionally the lower branches, no longer giving nourishment to the tree, slough off. We should not be ashamed to change our methods; rather we should be ashamed never to do so.

It is the fate of every truth to be an object of ridicule when it is first acclaimed.

A hero is not a champion of things become, but of things becoming; the dragon to be slain by him is precisely the monster of the status quo.

Nothing has changed, or will change. So we must change it.

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.

I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science.

It is often the case with a new idea that when it comes knocking on society's door with modesty and the best premises for its existence, there is a tremendous outcry from inside.

History is a record of exploded ideas.

So often I heard people paying blind obeisance to change - as though it had some virtue of its own. Change or we will die. Change or we will stagnate. Evergreens don't stagnate.

To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.

If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.

Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change, and there always will be change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It's not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, "By God, I will not change. I will not have this." Then, you're a dead man. We're great at adaptability. It's our strongest suit.

If we can get to the truth, we can change anything.