George Shearing Quotes

Having a set, popular formula does inhibit you.

You're not always able to choose.

Things are the way they are because they were the way they were.

Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.

Tightness gets in the way of everything, except tightness.

Decisions that lawmakers made decades or even a century ago have essentially locked us into ways of doing things, as the cost of changing looms more heavily than the potential benefits of trying something different.

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

There's no real alternative to what there is.

Reality is a form of idolatry. It allows what is to define and limit what might be.

When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

And that’s the way it is

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all other virtues.

We cannot make great historical events, but must adapt ourselves to the natural course of things and limit ourselves to securing what is already ripe.

Failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision

Nobody wants to change.

I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.

Being quiet is comfortable. Keeping things the way they've been is comfortable. And all comfort has done is maintain the status quo.

I never want to get stuck in the box.

People are stubborn, and sometimes even if change is good, people will always oppose change.

If you think you're doing everything right, then you have a tendency to stand pat.

There's just some things you can't change.

I did not want to write, but I had to resign myself to it in the end.

You can't. You just have to.

If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.