"Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found"
About this Quote
Security is usually sold as the absence of motion: stable jobs, fixed borders, routines that repeat like clockwork. Lindbergh flips that craving on its head, and the little dagger is the phrase "paradoxically enough". She knows the reader’s instinct is to resist. Change feels like risk. Reform implies admitting something is wrong. Growth demands new appetites, new skills, new versions of the self. Yet she insists that clinging to stasis is the more dangerous bet.
The intent here isn’t cheerleading for novelty. It’s a corrective to a culture that treats safety as hoarding: keep what you have, defend it, don’t touch anything. Lindbergh, writing from a 20th-century life shaped by public scrutiny, tragedy, and the whiplash of modernity, understands that the ground is moving whether you cooperate or not. The subtext is almost pragmatic: if you want continuity, you have to earn it through adaptation. Security isn’t a wall; it’s a muscle.
What makes the line work is its triad - "growth, reform, and change" - escalating from personal development to social repair to the broad fact of transformation. She smuggles in a moral claim, too: reform suggests responsibility, not just self-help. The paradox lands because it exposes a psychological truth: the desire for safety can become its own trap, and the only reliable shelter is learning how to live in motion.
The intent here isn’t cheerleading for novelty. It’s a corrective to a culture that treats safety as hoarding: keep what you have, defend it, don’t touch anything. Lindbergh, writing from a 20th-century life shaped by public scrutiny, tragedy, and the whiplash of modernity, understands that the ground is moving whether you cooperate or not. The subtext is almost pragmatic: if you want continuity, you have to earn it through adaptation. Security isn’t a wall; it’s a muscle.
What makes the line work is its triad - "growth, reform, and change" - escalating from personal development to social repair to the broad fact of transformation. She smuggles in a moral claim, too: reform suggests responsibility, not just self-help. The paradox lands because it exposes a psychological truth: the desire for safety can become its own trap, and the only reliable shelter is learning how to live in motion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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