36 Quotes About Stagnation

What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don't change, you die. It's that simple. It's that scary. Leonard Sweet

Dr. Chanter, in his brilliant History of Human Thought in the Twentieth Century, has made the suggestion that only a very small proportion of people are capable of acquiring new ideas of political or social behaviour after they are twenty-five years old. On the other hand, few people become directive in these matters until they are between forty and fifty. Then they prevail for twenty years or more. The conduct of public affairs therefore is necessarily twenty years or more behind the living thought of the times. This is what Dr. Chanter calls the "delayedrealisation of ideas". In the less hurried past this had not been of any great importance, but in the violent crises of the Revolutionary Period it became a primary fact. It is evident now that whatever the emergency, however obvious the new problem before our species in the nineteen-twenties, it was necessary for the whole generation that had learned nothing and could learn nothing from the Great War and its sequelae, to die out before any rational handling of world affairs could even begin. The cream of the youth of the war years had been killed; a stratum of men already middle-aged remained in control, whose ideas had already set before the Great War. It was, says Chanter, an inescapable phase. The world of the Frightened Thirties and the Brigand Forties was under the dominion of a generation of unteachable, obstinately obstructive men, blinded men, miseducating, misleading the baffled younger people for completely superseded ends. If they could have had their way, they would have blinded the whole world for ever. But the blinding was inadequate, and by the Fifties all this generation and its teachings and traditions were passing away, like a smoke-screen blown aside. Before a few years had passed it was already incredible that in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century the whole political life of the world was still running upon the idea of competitive sovereign empires and states. Men of quite outstanding intelligence were still planning and scheming for the "hegemony" of Britain or France or Germany or Japan; they were still moving their armies and navies and air forces and making their combinations and alliances upon the dissolving chess-board of terrestrial reality. Nothing happened as they had planned it; nothing worked out as they desired; but still with a stupefying inertia they persisted. They launched armies, they starved and massacred populations. They were like a veterinary surgeon who suddenly finds he is operating upon a human being, and with a sort of blind helplessness cuts and slashes more and more desperately, according to the best equestrian rules. The history of European diplomacy between 1914 and 1944 seems now so consistent a record of incredible insincerity that it stuns the modern mind. At the time it seemed rational behaviour. It did not seem insincere. The biographical material of the period -- and these governing-class people kept themselves in countenance very largely by writing and reading each other's biographies -- the collected letters, the collected speeches, the sapient observations of the leading figures make tedious reading, but they enable the intelligent student to realise the persistence of small-society values in that swiftly expanding scene. Those values had to die out. There was no other way of escaping from them, and so, slowly and horribly, that phase of the moribund sovereign states concluded. . H.G. Wells

This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change. George Packer

There is this common notion that young conservatives are the few, that most people had liberal worldviews when they were young. If this is true, then it is with great irony that a number of old liberals must never had progressed into conservatives as they grew older. Criss Jami

The laws of physics that deal with inertia also apply to humans, such that situations tend to remain the same over time. Del Suggs

Cooler heads prevail while things spin completely out of control. Clifford Cohen

The less you move on the groundthe more the world moves around. Ana Claudia Antunes

In pleasant peace and security How suddenly the soul in a man begins to die He shall look up above the stalled oxen Envying the cruel falcon, And dig under the straw for a stone To bruise himself on. Robinson Jeffers

Fear stagnation not adventure. Debasish Mridha

Stagnation is death. With love, accept and welcome changes. Debasish Mridha

Perhaps the only reason why you worry in life, tarry your goals and bury your joy is that you are still bearing the untold story of you untouched, which seems to bang on the doors of your heart every time! Go and open the way, and fulfill your destiny! Israelmore Ayivor

My mind, " he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world. Arthur Conan Doyle

When we are honest about the limitations we are self imposing it becomes necessary to cry out with determination and state you’ve had enough of the mediocrity of stagnation. Heidi Reagan

What holds true for the individual holds true for a society. It is never static; if it does not grow, it decays; if it does not transcend the status quo for the better, it changes for the worse. Often we, the individual or the people who make up a society, have the illusion we could stand still and not alter the given situation in the one or the other direction. This is one of the most dangerous illusions. The moment we stand still, we begin to decay. Erich Fromm

You cannot stay at the same level as when you first practiced your truth, life won't let you. Kamal Ravikant

Our Success or Stagnation depends on the level of Agreement that we have with the people around us. Paul Gitwaza

Worrying paralyzes progress; prayer, preparation and persistence ensures it. T.F. Hodge

Loss is like a wind, it either carries you to a new destination or it traps you in an ocean of stagnation. You must quickly learn how to navigate the sail, for stagnation is death. Val Uchendu

Curiosity is a worthwhile virtue than certainty. While the former leads to grow, the latter muzzles your growth and results in stagnation... Assegid Habtewold

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting? Ray Kroc

Do you want to change?" "It's the only evidence of life. Evelyn Waugh

Stagnation is self-abdication. Ryan Talbot

As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it. Victor Hugo

Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins. Charles F. Stanley

With endless pharmacological supplies at our fingertips, we do not need to penetrate the motives behind our actions, feelings, transgressions, dreams, and phobias. High on chemical substances we can remain stagnated in an infantile mental state. Without introspection, we foreclose ourselves from gaining the insight that allows us to navigate adulthood’s ceaseless demands. Kilroy J. Oldster

The absence of conditions for self-realization in a country, region and community leads to stagnation, social and economic crisis Sunday Adelaja

He wanted me to come home--to come home, as he said, and settle down, and whenever he said that I thought of the sediment at the bottom of a stagnant pond. Unknown

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without understanding the science which puts it to use; and his selfishness is no less blind than was formerly his devotedness to others. If society is tranquil, it is not because it is conscious of its strength and its well-being, but because it fears its weakness and its infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life. Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure. The desires, the repinings, the sorrows, and the joys of the present time lead to no visible or permanent result, like the passions of old men, which terminate in impotence. . Alexis De Tocqueville

We stand the risk of stagnation, because you refused to take risks. So life demands risks. Sunday Adelaja

Wisdom to accept change creates life, but conformity creates stagnation and leads to death. Debasish Mridha

As long as you're moving, it's easier to steer. Anonymous

War is progress, peace is stagnation Unknown

Many times, the thought of fear itself is greater than what it is we fear. Idowu Koyenikan