Inertia Quotes

“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
― Will Rogers

“Nothing happens until something moves.”
― Albert Einstein

“This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
― Og Mandino

“The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems

“At seventeen I'm waiting for my life to actually begin. I'm afraid I'll wake up tomorrow eighty years old and I WILL STILL BE WAITING.”
― Frank Warren, A Lifetime of Secrets: A PostSecret Book

“The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.”
― Marcel Proust

“The Law of Inertia states that a body in motion will remain in motion, and a body at rest will remain at rest. In life, nothing will happen when no one will make a move”
― HaveYouSeenThisGirl, She Died

“There are two kinds of discontented in this world, the discontented that works and the discontented that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants and the second loses what it has. There is no cure for the first but success and there is no cure at all for the second. The very worst of my vices and bad habits will abate of themselves if they are brought to an accounting every day.”
― Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World

“Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start; the pensée de derrière la tête [thought at the back of the head] fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every moment we expect the shell to break, for we know no reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we float with it, until—also without reason that we can discover—an energy is given, something—we know not what—enables us to gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our head, the background ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round again.”
― William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course

“Every thing was to take its natural course, however, neither impelled nor assisted.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead.”
― Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Not Now, Voyager: A Memoir

“The principle of vis inertiae (...) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed, and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter

“The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up.”
― Pam Houston, Waltzing the Cat

“If non-linear leaps in intelligence and ability are possible, why haven't these effects been observed in our schools? I believe the answer lies in the profound inertia of human thought: when an entire society believes something is impossible, it suppresses, by its very way of life, the evidence that would contradict that belief.”
― John Mighton

“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, House of the Tiger King : The Quest for a Lost City

“Something needs to shift,' you cry.
'I can't deal with it the way it is.'

If something needs to shift,
shift something.

Anything.

Even something that doesn't work
will cause action, and in action
you will figure out more than
when you are stuck...

When you're stuck...
it's hard to get moving again.

When you feel like you can't move,
any movement will shake things up.”
― Shellen Lubin

“When the thought arises to reach out, express care, or nurture our connections, “immediacy” can prevent “inertia” if we eschew repeated delays and unfulfilled promises. (“All the words he always wanted to tell her”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works," he told Carter shortly after they met, "and that's the clockworks, that's what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down. That's inertia. No one knows how that works, but it does. It's that one percent mystery that's the way of our maker. Put everything together, energy and inertia, the explicable and the inexplicable, and that's how you and I make our living.”
― Glen David Gold

“Wherever a man comes, there comes a revolution. The old is for slaves.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What do you fear, lady?’ he asked.
‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King”
― J R R Tolkien

“Hopelessness generates inactivity.”
― bell hooks, Where We Stand: Class Matters

“There are two cardinal human sins from which all others derive: impatience and indolence.”
― Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

“habit being a great binder, i think it is often so that those most in need of change choose to fall in love and then throw up their hands and blame it all on fate.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“There is an ideal place between stagnation and frenzy, where one savors the moments without indulging in inertia, allowing oneself to be cradled by possibility.
In this place, resides freedom.”
― Luigina Sgarro

“Inertia erodes life.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“The reason you’ve been dragging your feet for so many years is most likely because your motivation to change is far less than the powerful force of inertia which is probably due to the comfort zone.”
― Binod Shankar, Let's Get Real: 42 Tips for the Stuck Manager