societal inertia Quotes

American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away.

If the oncoming mutation to interstellar immortality is screwed up by the politicians, it will be because those of us who see the opportunities in modern science are not adroit enough to outmaneuver the forces of inertia, stupidity and greed. Well, if we're not intelligent enough to overcome such obstacles, then we don't deserve to carry off the mutation at this stage of evolution.

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.

I think the US is in a terrible state of denial. Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Gotterdammerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong.

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, or by increasing production, or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible, by striving constantly to achieve a state of immobility.

The office of the leisure class in social evolution is to retard the movement and to conserve what is obsolescent. This proposition is by no means novel; it has long been one of the commonplaces of popular opinion.

I was only one woman alone, and had no power to move to action full-fed, sleek- coated, ease-loving, pleasure-seeking, well-paid,and well-placed countrymen in this war- trampled, dead, old land, each one afraid that he should be called upon to do something.

When things don’t change, their sameness becomes an accretion. That is why all society puts on flesh. Succumbs to the cubicles and begins to fill them.

Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a prime conservative force.

Is it not true that for every person the course of life is along the line of least resistance, and that in this the movement of humanity is like the movement of material bodies?