But something held him, as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia.

— William Faulkner

Change has to be hard because you're fighting against inertia.

— James Thornton

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

— Max McKeown

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

— Will Rogers

He saw something more in those eyes. The emotion wasn't nakedly apparent, but Mr. Carla was a professional at reading the subtleties of people. The elderly and wildly successful credit card magnate believed that certain human frailties could actually help fuel success. Insecurity drove billionaire entrepreneurs. Emotional instability made for superb art. The need for attention built great political leaders. But anger, in his experience, led only to inertia.

— Jeff Hobbs

Human inertia induces us to believe that our lives will never change unless we relocate.

— Kilroy J. Oldster

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 It's very way of life, the evidence that would contradict that belief.

— John Mighton

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it is 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

I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at trifled science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere between Mrs. Wheeler's class and Mandarin Mall, somewhere between the schools and the streets. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though 'The Waste Land,' or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could've explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, had not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

— John Green