“People want to get better, but they don't want to change.”
Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 12 Father, p. 687.
Context: A wise psychiatrist once said to me, "People want to get better, but they don't want to change." But I would propose that it is only by allowing people born with horizontal identities not to change that one allows them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else.
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Andrew Solomon33
American journalist 1963Related quotes
“The number one reason most people don't get what they want is that they don't know what they want.”
T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer
Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
“A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.”
Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress
From Sex book
Variant: A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.
“It's always the people who don't want things who get them.”
Candace Bushnell book One Fifth Avenue
Source: One Fifth Avenue
“If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability.”
Aldous Huxley book Brave New World
Source: Brave New World
Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician
Fox News GOP debate, , quoted in * 2007-05-16
Romney: ‘We Ought To Double Guantanamo’
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2007/05/16/12919/romney-guantanamo/
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President
Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian
Larry King Live interview (2010)
Context: I don't hate America. I love America. I want it to be better. The only way we can get it to be better is to realistically criticize what's wrong with it. That's not what the Republicans do. … I don't want to be a pessimist. I'm a realist. One man's realist is another man's pessimist. But, no, I'm not like Mitt Romney, whose book is called No Apology, the Case for American Greatness. Really? Always waving the big foam number one finger; we're not number one in most things. We're number one in military. We're number one in money. We're number one in fat toddlers, meth labs, and people we send to prison. We're not number one in literacy, money spent on education. We're not even number one in social mobility. Social mobility means basically the American dream, the ability of one generation to do better than the next. We're tenth. That's like Sweden coming tenth in Swedish meatballs.