Zhao Ziyang Quotes

It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress

Why should we hesitate to toss the old views overboard.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

Digitization is certainly challenging the old ways of doing things, whether that's in publishing or politics. But it's not the end. In many ways, it is just the beginning.

The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.

The spirit of the age is the very thing a great man changes.

One who uses an ancient rule to govern the present does not necessarily see the changes that have taken place.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

Novelty even is useful if a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad.

People who have a new idea often just stop having an old idea.

Please, join the modern world.

Reform can only move forward. It cannot stagnate. Even more so, it can’t move backward.

If you don’t actively reform, you will passively get reformed.

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

I know that without change there would be no progress, but I am not going to mistake mere change for progress.

In 10 years, ... you're going to see the most valuable economy in the world -- the largest economy in the world -- is going to be a country run by communists. The Chinese seem to be very good at capitalism. And this is going to have fundamental problems and present an identity crisis for the United States. Because for a long time, free markets coincided with liberties such as free speech, free press, free religion. And all of a sudden, this equation is going to be decoupled. And when it gets decoupled, we might find that democracy, the multitude of voices, actually impedes capitalism because a state that does not have any pretense of limited government can very quickly mandate a regulatory framework for drones, for electric cars, for self-driving cars, for any new innovation where they feel that they can leapfrog Western societies. And this is a very unique thing in the American experience. And this is why it's very important to think of American capitalism as an operating system and not as an ideology. Because when you think about it as an ideology, you can have good politics make for very, very bad policy. That market outcomes and democratic voices and battles for votes can end up stifling progress.

If we want Saudi Arabia to progress, we have no choice but to embrace change.

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

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.

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

Real change comes when people are enabled to use their thinking and their energy in a new way, using a different system of thought, different language, and having fresh visions of the future.

Strong communities ... embrace change. New discoveries require us to think differently and approach things differently, to think anew.

Your current thinking got you here. Only new thinking will get you out.

To innovate is not to reform.