A Quote by B. F. Skinner
A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other.
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When you talk about change, you know what makes it really tough for people is on the one hand you've got tradition, and on the other hand you've got change; in many people's mind, change equals modernization. Tradition, however. I'm a big tradition guy.
Christianity has stayed stable, as it must do. The doctrines don't change. The understanding of what it means to walk with God doesn't change. The reality of worship doesn't change, not at heart, anyway. So Christianity appears to be stuck.
Transform yourself. It is not the opponent that will change, or the Frisbee. They will change in relation to your change. You must change.
People must have freedom and at the same time they must have security. They must not be using freedom to fight with each other. When they have security of the mind, their fears will subside, and their mistrust of others will also decline. There will be no need to worry that somebody will be looking at you with jealousy. They won't have to worry that someone will report some lies to their superiors and get them into trouble. This fear of being unjustly punished would disappear and I believe confidence and trust will mount and people will have more love and respect towards one another.
Though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientist afterward works in a different world... I am convinced that we must learn to make sense of statements that at least resemble these. What occurs during a scientific revolution is not fully reducible to a re-interpretation of individual and stable data. In the first place, the data are not unequivocally stable.
We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.
Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change, and there always will be change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It's not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, "By God, I will not change. I will not have this." Then, you're a dead man. We're great at adaptability. It's our strongest suit.
The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition or surrounded by a halo. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to it. If I want others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see however strange it may be to mine. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man... but that is a limited ethics.
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
With respect to our friends in the [Iraq] region, each has its own system, each will have to make its own judgment as to whether it will change, how fast it will change, and we hope that we can help influence them as to how change comes about and what change might be better for them than other forms of change.
Women need to be empowered through the strongest tool - education. They don't need to be subservient to anyone, but at the same time, men must change their mindset towards women. If they are more respectful towards them, then things will change at the grassroots level. It will happen slowly, but everyone has to move together.
Industries and businesses that must operate in the marketplace of free choice know that they must change, they must adapt, they must accommodate to changes in public attitudes-or they will surely die.
By a persistent effort of will it is possible to change the whole body. The athlete must always keep in mind this concept of change and progression. He must never accept his limitations as being permanent, because they are not.
In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. And it must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot, whose fate is still unknown. By taking these steps, and only by taking these steps, the Iraqi regime has an opportunity to avoid conflict. These steps would also change the nature of the Iraqi regime itself. America hopes the regime will make that choice.
What I think we fear is rapid, pronounced, and uncontrollable changes to ourselves, and because of this we have a form of personality inertia - something that resists rapid change.
Theres another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.
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