Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge intime, toprotest againstchange, particularlychangefor the better.
Interpretation
As people age, they often resist positive changes in their lives.
John Steinbeck's quote reflects the innate tendency of individuals to resist changes, even those that are beneficial. It suggests that as we grow older, we become more set in our ways and hesitant to embrace new experiences or improvements in our life, highlighting a common human struggle with adaptation and acceptance.
In practice
In a motivational speech addressing the importance of embracing change.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
At one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.
After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.
We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
Griping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
You can’t mandate [cultural change], can’t engineer it. What you can do is create the conditions for transformation. You can provide incentives. You can define the marketplace realities and goals. But then you have to trust. In fact, in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.
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