The politically conservative, cautious axiom is best expressed,
1) "Where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, Feb. 8, 1641
Another axiom uttered by a political conservative that does not sound very conservative is,
2) "Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately."
Attributed to Henry Kissinger but I don't know when or the context. That is squishy. It is both command ("must") and advisory ("should"). Any axiom worth its salt is in "If-Then" form. "What must happen?" Human agency is implied, but only. I must die. Should I let nature take its course or should I be proactive and whack myself? Or should another do it? It is also unbounded temporally: Since I must die eventually, should I die immediately? By any other name Kissinger's statement makes no sense.
A very similar, inverted version is attributed separately to Kissinger and to former University of Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley, the latter being very proactive in firing head coaches:
3) "What should be done eventually, must be done immediately."
There personal agency is explicit. This also has the utility of being anti-procrastination. It is mandatory and so ticks that box of the well-formed axiom. But it suffers from the same temporal fallacy. It just does not follow that if I should take action eventually that I must take action immediately. It does focus you, though. If I know that I should do something, I should do it and not waste time. But "immediately"?; "must be immediately"? A guide, but not a great axiom.
Other Foley variations:
4) "Anything that needs to be done eventually should probably be done immediately".
I like that one best. Yes, "probably" is squishy but is necessarily squishy. It is not the command ("must") of the perfect axiom but it forces you to think through the temporality. Is it necessary that I take action now, right now? Is this the best time? I must say I don't like "must". I like "needs" better; it is closer to Lord Falkland's term "necessary".
5) "If something needs to be done eventually, it needs to be done immediately." That's from 2002 to Associated Press.
"If-Then". That's an axiom. The "eventually-immediately" command however is fallacious.
*Updated, May 4, 9:32 pm
Here is Pat Riley's word salad attempt:
6) "Until you change the way you go about doing the things that are necessary to win, whatever they are, those things you're doing to win if they aren't working must change."
+Pat Riley May 9, 2025: "Until you change the way you go about doing the things that you do to win, if you don't win you have to go about making changes to make sure that you can win. I don't know if that makes sense to you or not but you know change is the highest form of sanity."
No, it doesn't make any more sense today than it did a year ago. "Change is the highest form of sanity" is a new one to me. Makes some sense. Reverse of the axiom, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Or of , "The definition off senility is standing pat and expecting something different than 44-38 for eleven straight fucking years."
# Updated May 9:
I have not seen the same degree of elegance in an axiom of change as in Falkland's axiom of non-action. The change axioms all founder on the temporal or the inelegant. Tweaking Falkland just a teeny bit yields an axiom of change:
⭐️"When change is necessary, it is necessary to change."
I don't know if that makes sense to you or not but it does to me. In Falkland's no-change axiom, "change" is a verb, the actor is implied in both clauses. Here, "change" is a noun in the first clause, a verb in the second. The first is an objective set of facts: you see a dead end sign up ahead. the decision-maker is implied. in the second "it is necessary to change" the actor is more explicit. The driver better go in another direction.