Bill McKibben Quotes

When push comes to shove, the status quo is a very powerful force.

I think the most common meme is that it's too difficult to change. It's too risky to change. My nature doesn't allow me to change.

Inertia is the most powerful force in politics.

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

To think to keep things as they are, is to let them move unpredictably, since nothing but death will still the beat of the heart or keep the universe from its perpetual motion.

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and woman who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will least forever or else are so frightened it won't, that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

In theory it is easy to convince an ignorant person; in actual life, men not only object to offer themselves to be convinced, but hate the man who has convinced them.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

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

We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.

While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.

People don't want novelty - they want the reassurance of familiarity. No-one wants to be challenged, no-one wants to have their minds blown. There is an insatiable appetite for affirmation.

The greatest evils of society are goods that have refused to go on, but have sat down on the highway, saying to the world, "We stop here; do you stop also.

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

You know, before when (the police went) to work, they used to be like, 'I'm gonna kick somebody's ass today and so I hope I can catch somebody in a bad situation or breaking the law, because I'm gonna beat someone's ass in a big way, I think that attitude has changed.

Things remain the same because it is impossible to change very much without changing most of everything.

People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.

Inertia is the first law of history, as it is of physics.

Competent people are the most resistant to change

There's a part of all of us whose impulse is to say, "Let's keep everything the same until I die and then you can do whatever you want afterward." And that's a difficult part.

People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.

The status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they've got is probably better than the risk and fear that come with change.

We always plan too much and always think too little. We resent a call to thinking and hate unfamiliar argument that does not tally with what we already believe or would like to believe.