Quotes about Resistance

Here's the next section of quotes from my book 1000 Great Quotations for Business, Management & Training.


An updated version of the book is newly available as part of my Almost Free Kindle titles both in the UK and in the USA.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Woodrow Wilson, US President (1856-1924)

People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.

Charles Kettering, US engineer, inventor (1876-1958)

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.

Niccolo Machiavelli, Italian political theorist (1469-1527)

The soft-minded man fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

Martin Luther King Jr, US civil rights leader (1929-1968)

Men often oppose a thing merely because they had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

Alexander Hamilton, US statesman (1757-1804)

Every advance in civilisation has been denounced while it was still recent.

Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, mathematician (1872-1970)

He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.

James Russell Lowell, US poet, critic, statesman (1819-1891)

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.

Hal Abelson, US computer academic, author

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is in the cemetery.

Harold Wilson, British Prime Minister (1916-1995)

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

W Edwards Deming, US statistician, author (1900-1993)

The sad fact is that organisations change as little as they can rather than as much as they should.

Barry A Stein, US management author, consultant (b. 1955)

Change is always a threat when done to people, but it’s embraced as an opportunity when it is done by people.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, US academic, management author (b. 1943)

You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Navajo proverb

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

Peter Medaway, Brazilian/British biologist (1915-1987)

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the greatest harmony.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher (535-475 BC)