Fear of Progress Quotes

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

I think people are scared of progress and change.

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

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 things start to happen, and the path does reveal itself to us, we become afraid of carrying on

My therapist says I'm afraid of success. I guess I could understand that, because after all, fulfilling my potential would REALLY cut into my sitting-around time

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.

We are afraid of ideas, of experimenting, of change. We shrink from thinking a problem through to a logical conclusion.

We had two terms of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, we have these people that are afraid, and they always try to roll us back, but they can never roll us back as much as we go forward.

A life that is never willing to change is a great tragedy - a wasted life. Change is a necessary part of a growing life, and we need change in order to remain fresh and to keep progressing.

I was frightened to go forward, but I was even more frightened of going back.

When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.

Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity...are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history. . . . We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the Moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future. . . . A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die.

Whenever a political regime or religious establishment refuses to tolerate criticism, it advertises itself as repressive, backward, and insecure.

Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.

I have struggled for decades now with the fear of and resistance to change - mostly in the realms of technology, transportation, and the ways people choose to communicate. If I had a theme song, it would be that lovely song 'I'm Old-Fashioned,' as sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

What's interesting about the Taliban, is they're more afraid of educating girls than they are of drones. One educated girl is more scary to the Taliban than a drone.

The dream he needed most was the dream that frightened him more.

You wouldn't believe how many philosophers are afraid of movement.

The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.

So I do think sometimes the political mechanism is completely disconnected from the people. However, what I will say is that history tells us that whenever things start to move too fast, whenever progress makes people feel a little breathless, one of the go-to spots that government, that the ruling powers that society goes to is to try to repress women.

If we don't act at all (express our imaginings either in work or a changing personality, so that we can learn and think again something better) we certainly rot.

I hate and fear 'science' because of my conviction that, for long to come if not for ever, it will be the remorseless enemy of mankind. I see it destroying all simplicity and gentleness of life, all the beauty of the world; I see it restoring barbarism under a mask of civilization; I see it darkening men's minds and hardening their hearts.