Stagnate Quotes & Sayings

So, whenever you find yourself putting forth great effort without success, you're trying to force something that won't fit under the circumstances. That's a destructive waste of time. And if that isn't enough to keep in mind, your techniques must always be allowed to evolve and change, in relationships, in life, in science, in society. Otherwise you stagnate, and you won't get anywhere in the long run ... You know what the philosopher Aldous Huxley said? He said 'Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. — Tony Vigorito

Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history ... We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the Moon certainly will not solve ... But I think this would be fatal to our future ... A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die. — Margaret Mead

Grow or Die - Don't let your fear of uncertainty keep you from achieving your dreams, it is far riskier to stagnate. — Malti Bhojwani

Science will stagnate if it is made to serve practical goals. — Albert Einstein

The best part about owning it is that when you accept what really is, you stop living in the past or in some dream world and start living in the real world, where you can actually do something about what's wrong. It enables action and change, whereas when you deny the reality of your situation, you stagnate. You can't get to the breakthrough place where you see what's true and recognize what you need to change. Owning it is a way to release your demons and come out on the other side. — Bethenny Frankel

I believe that we are all born for greatness yet most of us mire in the mediocrity of life. We become complacent or worse, discouraged and stagnate. We damn ourselves by not progressing. — Toni Sorenson

The wealthy and satisfied do not migrate, they stagnate. — Louis L'Amour

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

My hunch is that pop culture began to stagnate the moment Americans started to love the past more than they did the future. — Graydon Carter

Twelve years ago we characterized the scene as poor service, no service, or self-service. Unfortunately, little has changed. As a result, customers understandably hesitate to pay any premium. Profitability therefore suffers, wages stagnate, and workers disengage - creating a downward spiral to yet more miserable service. — B. Joseph Pine II

In general, the problem in a relationship is when the couple stagnate. — Simon Baker

Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues. — Edmund Burke

As an artist, I do not need to be rich but I do need to be richly supported. I cannot allow my emotional and intellectual life to stagnate or the work will show it. My life will show it. — Julia Cameron

Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die. — Robert Zubrin

I am capable of much more. I guess every artist feels that way. If you are satisfied, you begin to stagnate. I want to grow as an actress every day. There are so many things you can learn, and you can improve upon your skills and abilities every day. — Madhuri Dixit

line. Creativity is a response to our environment. Greek painting was a response to the complex light (the Greek painter Apollodoros was the first to develop a technique for creating the illusion of depth), Greek architecture a response to the complex landscape, Greek philosophy a response to the complex, uncertain times. The problem with paradise is that it is perfect and therefore requires no response. This is why wealthy people and places often stagnate. Athens — Eric Weiner

Still, we've attempted to argue when necessary; you've got to be able to let loose and even lose your temper a bit if you're finding it hard to breathe. Closeness has to be like running water; it mustn't stagnate and sour. — Oddny Eir

Our life crises tell us that we need to break free of beliefs that no longer serve our personal development.
These points at which we must choose to change or to stagnate are our greatest challenges.
Every new crossroads means we enter into a new cycle of change - whether it be adopting a new health regimen or a new spiritual practice.
And change inevitably means letting go of familiar people and places and moving on to another stage of life. — Caroline Myss

From these activists we can learn a crucial lesson: without citizens creating the institutions necessary for facilitating the growth of public deliberation, democracy will be a meaningless term. Without political leaders articulating this idea and acting upon it, public life and citizenship will continue to stagnate. — Kevin Mattson

As I look back over my mountains of growth and compare them to the molehills where I stagnated, community often made the difference. — Mary E. DeMuth

Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All too often, we've seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of managers to wander. — Warren Buffett

I felt Nigeria didn't have to succumb to the image of being a corrupt country; we didn't have to let the economy stagnate. — Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

I have lived to know that the secret of happiness is never to allow your energies to stagnate. — Adam Clarke

Everyone needs deadlines. Even the beavers. They loaf around all summer, but when they are faced with the winter deadline, they work like fury. If we didn't have deadlines, we'd stagnate. — Walt Disney Company

It would be hard to imagine Heaven without children. It wouldn't be Heaven! It would be a pretty boring place without children. What are we going to do, all get to be old people and then stagnate and that's the end of it? Once all those that are already born grow up, the place would really lack life without new generations of children! If there were no children, it would be a dead society. — David Berg

What I want is to be willing to fail rather than stagnate. — James Dickey

I did not hesitate to quit my courses and leave my apartment, feeling as detached from everything as only at twenty-three one feels, when all is temporary and settling down means to stagnate — Edgar Cantero

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set. — Adlai Stevenson

The point is to keep trying new things, meeting new people, visiting new places. Once you settle into a rut, no matter how fun that rut may seem, you stagnate. You might as well be dead. — Lenore Appelhans

I can say, I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable. Or I could say get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable? — Barbra Streisand

They despite and hate the government more and more, but they don't know how to set about changing it. The country is dying for some sort of lead, and so far all it is getting is a crowd of fresh professional leaders. Who never get anywhere. Who do not seem to be aiming anywhere. We are living in a world of jaded politics. Poverty increases, prices rise, unemployment spreads, mines, factories stagnate, and nothing is done. — H.G.Wells

To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them; that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too, that there is no such thing as a demiurge, that there is no famous man who will take the responsibility for everything, but that the demiurge is the people themselves and the magic hands are finally only the hands of the people. — Frantz Fanon

If you are not grateful for your job, you will automatically give less. When you give less you decrease what comes back to you, and as a result, you will never be happy in your work, you will never give more than you have to, and your job or work will stagnate and eventually deteriorate, which could mean losing your job. Remember, for those who do not have gratitude, even what they have will be taken from them. — Rhonda Byrne

Of course, the EU is not going to fall apart, but at best it will stagnate for the foreseeable future and we will be dealing with quite a lot of internal chaos. — Peter Mandelson

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are! From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins, That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war, Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains. — Charles Lamb

Unknown situations offer us opportunities for fresh learning. When we judge these situations solely by our conscious logic, fear grips us; we turn these opportunities down. We close ourselves from new experiences. We stagnate.

On the contrary, when we embrace these opportunities, we force our intuition to work in the face of risks. And then, when we observe our perceptions, actions, and reactions in these situations, we see our evolution. We break out of our limits. — Indrajit Garai

It is an unfinished society that we offer the world-a society that is forever committed to change, to improvement and to growth, that will never stagnate in the certitude of ideology or the finalities of dogma. — Robert Kennedy

I would recommend to those persons who are inclined to stagnate, whose blood is beginning to thicken sluggishly in their veins, to try keeping four dogs, two of which are puppies. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

We can decide to remain in our isolated bunkers, becoming more and more obsessed with looking inward instead of outward, or we can decide to be great together. We can decide to stagnate, or we can decide to grow. We can decide to settle for the status quo, or we can decide to reach for the stars. Choose. — Nalini Singh

So often I heard people paying blind obeisance to change - as though it had some virtue of its own. Change or we will die. Change or we will stagnate. Evergreens don't stagnate. — Judith Perelman Rossner

Perhaps our country is flawed, but we cannot deny its strength. My fear is that, without change, that strength will become stagnate. And I love our country too much to let that happen. I hope too much to let that happen. — Kiera Cass

Never feel comfortable where you're now, get stuck, complacent, and stagnate in one spot; be always relevant, dynamic, and multi gifted. This is one of the rules of the 21st C. — Assegid Habtewold

It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. — Aleister Crowley

If I, who am rhu'ad, do not break the laws," she said, "then no one will ever dare to break them, and our planet will stagnate in dead traditions. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

The human being cannot live in a condition of emptiness for very long: if he is not growing toward something, he does not merely stagnate; the pent-up potentialities turn into morbidity and despair, and eventually into destructive activities. — Rollo May

These women are, quite simply, alive; they know that the source of true values is not in external things but in human hearts. This gives its charm to the world they live in: they banish ennui by the simple fact of their presence, with their dreams, their desires, their pleasures, their emotions, their ingenuities. The sanseverina, that 'active soul' dreads ennui more than death. To stagnate in ennui 'is to keep from dying, she said, not to live'; she is ' always impassioned over something, always in action and gay too '. Thoughtless, childish or profound, gay or grave, daring or secretive, they all reject the heavy sleep in which humanity is mired. And these women who have been able to maintain their liberty- empty as it has been- will rise through passion to heroism once they find an objective worthy of them; their spiritual power, their energy, suggest the fierce purity of total dedication — Simone De Beauvoir

Because one moment in life does not define a person," Li Min said. "Without mistakes and misjudgments we would stagnate. It is no shameful thing to be beaten when outnumbered, not when you were brave enough to try. Nor is a scar or injury something to despair over, for it is a mark that you were strong enough to survive. — Alexandra Bracken

Prosperity and abundance in a society depend on a certain type of person: the producer. Societies with few producers stagnate and decay, while nations with a large number of producers vibrantly grow-in wealth, freedom, power, influence and the pursuit of happiness. — Oliver DeMille

Story is the mechanism by which we live, express, understand, and evolve. Story is more than just equipment for living - it's life itself. When a culture's stories are honest, authentic, and connected to the truth, the culture is strong, productive, and progressive. When a culture's stories stagnate and become derivative, deceptive, shallow, and unconnected to the energy of life, the culture erodes, degrades, and eventually perishes (although the people may not realize they're dead!). Stories are the manner by which we extract meaning out of the fibrous pulp of our everyday lives. And meaning is the spiritual oxygen that allows our soul to breathe. Without stories, life has no meaning. Without meaning, we cannot live. — Derek Rydall

Not in the least," I said. "I understand everything you've said. But - oh, Simon, I feel so resentful! Why should father make things so difficult? Why can't he say what he means plainly?" "Because there's so much that just can't be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is - plainly - and you'll see what I mean." Then he said that art could state very little - that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments - such as father's - all art would stagnate. "That's why one ought not to let oneself resent them - though I believe it's a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don't understand. — Dodie Smith

You do not allow these to flow, which is to say to be released; therefore, they have no choice but to stagnate. Good impulses die for lack of being acted on. Love grows timid and afraid when not expressed. Hatred and anxiety loom larger than life. — Deepak Chopra

Mankind is advanced technically. Man can build space stations, can assemble them in space, and ponders about landing on Mars, but the development of mankind itself seems to stagnate on stone age level. — Sigmund Jahn

Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The — George Orwell

If you don't keep learning and growing, you're going to stagnate. — Bruce Cockburn

Don't stagnate because of fear. — Beth Revis

The programmer who refuses to keep exploring will surely stagnate, forget his joy, lose the will to program (and become a manager). — Marijn Haverbeke

Water is patient; it can stagnate and let itself be coated with scum if need be. It is as gentle as the morning's dew. It is non-confrontational, even respectful, in circumventing the rocks in a stream. It makes room for everything that enters its pools. It accommodates by assuming the shape of any vessel it is poured into. And it is humble, seeking always the lowest level. Yet along with - or rather because of these adaptive, yielding properties, it is ultimately irresistible; it carves canyons out of stone. — Huston Smith

I was stuck in Port Ticonderoga, proud bastion of the common-and-garden variety button and of lower-priced long johns for the budget-minded shoppers. I would stagnate here, nothing would ever happen to me, I would end up an old-maid like Miss Violence, pitied and derided. This at the bottom was my fear. I wanted to be elsewhere, but I saw no way to get there. Once in a while, I found myself hoping that I would be abducted by white slavers, even though I didn't believe in them. At least it would be a change... — Margaret Atwood

Balance is the most important of all qualities. We don't want a little bit of rapid growth and then to stagnate. We want continual growth, continual development, which implies balance, always. — Frederick Lenz

Obsolescence is a fate devoutly to be wished, lest science stagnate and die. — Stephen Jay Gould

The degree to which the opportunity to use power effectively is granted to or withheld from individuals is one operative difference between those companies which stagnate and those which innovate. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Those who would live beyond their nature-given span lose their framework, and with it lose a proper sense of relationship to those who are younger, gaining only the resentment of youth for encroaching on its careers and resources. The fact that there is a limited right time to do the rewarding things in our lives is what creates the urgency to do them. Otherwise, we might stagnate in procrastination. The very fact that at our backs, as the poet cautions his coy mistress, we "always hear / Time's winged chariot hurrying near" enhances the world and makes the time priceless. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Change or stagnate. Keep moving or die. — Mercedes Lackey

My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. — Oscar Wilde

Thinking men cannot be ruled; ambitious men do not stagnate. — Ayn Rand

If you only do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion — Twyla Tharp

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired ... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world. — Samuel Johnson

Don't let yourself stagnate or reach a plateau. Keep learning, keep improving. Be open to change. Your ability to constantly raise the bar higher and set standards will help you evolve and take you to the next level. — Roopleen

Removed from its more restrictive sense, masturbation has become an expression for everything that has proved, for lack of human contact, to be void of meaning. We have communication problems, suffer from egocentrism and narcissism, are frustrated by information glut and loss of environment; we stagnate despite the rising GNP. — Gunter Grass

We can kill all of the terrorist, but that will not solve the problem of terrorism. By reducing or eliminating fundamentalism we may be able to reduce terrorism. Open your eyes and look at the world. Fundamentalism is a prison for the human mind where no free thinking can be done. In that prison, the mind will stagnate and degenerate. The mind works in a very different way. It wants to get out. When that imprisoned mind can't get out, it becomes more fundamentalist and it wants to take revenge. Terrorism is the weapon of fundamentalism. — Debasish Mridha

Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows that surround it. We need the tonic of wildness ... — Henry David Thoreau

ideas, different ways of looking at the world." "Different beliefs?" "Yes, different beliefs, too. But we don't have contact with other people. We go far too many years without seeing anyone other than ourselves. In fact, I do not think it is a good thing that we spend our entire lives on this ship." "Why not?" I was amazed at how open she was with me, and I wanted to encourage her to keep talking. "We stagnate, and we have no history." "We — Richard Paul Russo

A man's life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other. — John Burroughs

It's easy to get stagnate, if you play the same character. In New Moon, I felt like I was going a little bit deeper. — Robert Pattinson

If nobody changes the world, if nobody works to make it better, then we stagnate. — Brandon Sanderson

For a week or a fortnight I can write prodigiously in a retired place (as at Broadstairs), and a day in London sets me up again and starts me. But the toil and labour of writing, day after day, without that magic lantern, is IMMENSE!! ... My figures seem disposed to stagnate without crowds about them. — Charles Dickens

It's not the failure that holds us back but the reluctance to begin over again that causes us to stagnate. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We can have all the food and water we need, but without the sustenance of
real story, real art - without the wisdom, insight, and "life instruction" it brings - we will stagnate as a culture and become a swamp where quality life can no longer be sustained. So share your gifts! Share your art! — Derek Rydall

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. — Oscar Wilde

The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. — George Orwell

A civilization that only looks inward will stagnate. We have to keep looking outward; we have to keep finding new avenues for human endeavor and human expression. — John L. Phillips