Billy Mitchell Quotes

Every single change is fought by those who would be affected by it.

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.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Anyone who is a leader for reform will accumulate enemies over time.

Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo.

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

If you want to really change something, do not try to fight the existing reality. create a new reality.

The way I look at the world is establishment versus change agents. The establishment is those people who want to keep things the way they are. Change agents are people like me.

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.

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.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

When you're a catalyst for change, you make enemies - and I'm proud of the ones I've got.

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

The price of doing the same old thing is higher than the price of change.

Those who cling to the past won't give up without a fight.

No great reform can be achieved except at the sacrifice of some opinion.

Only force would produce social change.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on.

… all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march.