Inertia Quotes - Page 7

• Galileo had already made a significant beginning toward a knowledge of the law of motion. He discovered the law of inertia and the law of bodies falling freely in the gravitational field of the earth.

  Albert Einstein

  Fall, Law, Body

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.255, Broadway Books

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• The way upward from inertia to illumination passes through the sphere of action.

  Swami Prabhavananda

  Illumination, Way, Spheres

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• It takes forever if you go by inertia.

  Jane Siberry

  Forever, Ifs

  Song: The Very Large Hat

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• There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

  Thomas Hardy

  Together, Events, Lines

  Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.1161, Delphi Classics

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• The great enemy of any attempt to change men's habits is inertia. Civilization is limited by intertia.

  Edward Bernays

  Men, Civilization, Enemy

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• Without conscious and deliberate effort, inertia always wins

  Tony Hsieh

  Winning, Effort, Conscious

  Tony Hsieh (2010). “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”, p.54, Hachette UK

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• In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.

  George Eliot

  Memories, Past, Men

  George Eliot (1859). “Adam Bede”, p.262, London

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• One curious result of this inertia, which deserves to rank among the fundamental 'laws' of nature, is that when a discovery has finally won tardy recognition it is usually found to have been anticipated, often with cogent reasons and in great detail.

  F. C. S. Schiller

  Science, Discovery, Law

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• Let us live so we do not regret years of inertia and ignorance, so when we die we can say all of our energy was dedicated to the noble liberation of the human mind and spirit, beginning with my own.

  Maya Angelou

  Regret, Ignorance, Years

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• We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say. When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage compost, it is very stable. You are not running from anything. You can have a sense of artistic security. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

  Natalie Goldberg

  Running, Hate, Writing

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• How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Struggle, Order

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• The core of a scientific lifestyle is to change your mind when faced with information that disagrees with your views, avoiding intellectual inertia, yet many of us praise leaders who stubbornly stick to their views as "strong."

  Max Tegmark

  Strong, Views, Leader

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• The other producer of old age is habit: the deathly process of doing the same thing in the same way at the same hour day after day, first from carelessness, then from inclination, at last from cowardice or inertia. Luckily the inconsequent life is not the only alternative; for caprice is as ruinous as routine. Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

  Edith Wharton

  Writing, Age, Routine

  "A Backward Glance".

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• To refuse everything, to say, even when there is something which really should be done, "Ah, that's no longer feminist," is a pessimistic, even masochistic tendency in women, the result of having been habituated to inertia, to pessimism.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Feminist, Done, Pessimistic

  Source: www.iaphitalia.org

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• We stayed on at the Institute [Chicago called the School of Design] because that was - I don't know, you start at one place and you stay there, I guess. Inertia takes over.

  Warren MacKenzie

  School, Design, Chicago

  Source: www.aaa.si.edu

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• We're used to institutional-maintenance Catholicism, in which the institution ticks along by its own inertia and people are "born" into the Church. Francis knows that is over and done with: "Kept" Catholicism, whether "kept" by legal establishment or by cultural habit, has no future.

  George Weigel

  People, Church, Maintenance

  Source: eppc.org

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• I don't think America needs 28,000 men on Okinawa. I don't think we need an army in Germany. What's it for, to protect Germans against the Russians, to protect the French against the Germans? It's just there by inertia, that's my reading of it. I don't think we need an army in South Korea because North Korea is absolutely no threat to South Korea.

  Kevin Gutzman

  Reading, Army, Men

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• He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.

  George Orwell

  Pain, Effort, Special

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.229, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Years passed; and he endured the idleness of his intelligence and the inertia of his heart.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Years, Idleness

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• We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

  Learned Hand

  Change, Past, Choices

  Harry Kalven, Learned Hand (1967). “The Supreme Court as legislator: the contribution of an independent judiciary to civilization : an address”

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• We know - intellectually - that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Ostriches, Hands, Issues

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• Our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy; or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve -- and I believe this can be done -- a budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness; the second reflects an investment in the future.

  John F. Kennedy

  Believe, Cutting, Two

  Address to the Economic Club of New York, delivered 14 December 1962, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• The most dangerous enemy to Israel's security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Israel, Intellectual, Enemy

  "Looking Ahead By Looking Back" by Asaf Romirowsky, www.jpost.com. October 12, 2008.

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• The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.

  Tahir Shah

  Waiting, Village, Dangerous

  Tahir Shah (2013). “House of the Tiger King Paperback”, p.88, Lulu.com

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• In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage.

  Michael Steinhardt

  Ignorance, America, People

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