I’ve seen trends ebb and flow. I’ve seen progress and I’ve seen regression, not just in gay movements, but in all types of movements — whether it’s gender or sexuality or race. All kinds of different movements. And humans are fickle. Humans are very trendy. And they’re posers. If some economic change happens, it can all go to shit, honestly. And I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime. So do I trust that this is what it is and it’ll stick forever? I’m skeptical and I’m cautious.

The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends. These determine ultimately success or failure of an organization and its efforts. Such changes, however, have to be perceived; they cannot be counted, defined, or classified. The classifications still produce the expected figures — as they did for the Edsel. But the figures no longer correspond to actual behavior.

The common error lies in failing to recognize that apparent trends can be generated as by-products, or side consequences, of expansions and contractions in the amount of variation within a system, and not by anything directly moving anywhere.

The truly important events on the outside are not the trends. They are changes in the trends.

But our strong desire to identify trends often leads us to detect a directionality that doesn’t exist, or to infer causes that cannot be sustained. The subject of trends has inspired and illustrated some of the classic fallacies in human reasoning. Most prominently, since people seem to be so bad at thinking about probability and so prone to read pattern into sequence of events, we often commit the fallacy of spotting a “sure” trend in speculating about causes, when we observe no more than a random string of happenings.

It's not really a rule--it's more like a trend.

Men change their dispositions as they change their climate.

Everything is a trend. It’s a phase. It comes, it goes; something else is going to take over. Something that is not going to be lost in any narrative is good stories, original stories, and African stories, and you can’t lose worth with that.

History has always changed its course, changed its stance, swaying to the tunes, pendulum like, between a Ruling Party and an Opposition Party.

A fad is a wave in the ocean, and a trend is the tide. A fad gets a lot of hype, and a trend gets very little. Like a wave,

People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood.

You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.

Fashions, being themselves begotten of the desire for change, are quick to change also.

To every trend there is a counter-trend. There are a number of pendulums operating and each creates new business opportunities.

Are we truly committed to the notion that ideals and values vary and alter in accordance with changing conditions? Should we not question such a relativistic dogma? Is not the degree of our sensitivity to the validity of the ultimate ideals and values that fluctuates rather than the ultimate ideals and values?