Theodore Ryland Sizer Quotes

Competence is the enemy of change!

Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers.

Sometimes we get comfortable with the status quo, even when the status quo isn’t any good.

The adherents of the old order have a powerful ally in the natural law of inertia inherent in humanity which is … a natural defense against change.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

The establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.

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.

They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving.

We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change.

Unless you move, the place where you are is the place where you will always be.

Reductionism is merciless.

It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.

Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself... We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts.

The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.

There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

It's all connected. When you save any part of the world, you've saved the whole world. In fact, that's the only way it can be done.

Whenever we look at life, we look at networks.

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.

What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

Every day things change, but basically they stay the same.

If you stand still long enough, you'll get stuck.

The largest enemy of change isn't 'no', it's 'not yet' - that is the easiest way to forestall change.