quotations about change
Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world. And the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.
BILL CLINTON
speech at the Urban League National Convention in San Diego, California, July 27, 1992
Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
Can only mar.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Perfectness"
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Parable of the Talents
Change isn't always good. Sometimes changing things is a terrible mistake.
BOB BARKER
Esquire, Jul. 2007
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Kéramos
When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well let us realize
Oh, that a change can only come
When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah
MICHAEL JACKSON & LIONEL RICHIE
"We Are the World"
The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Chords of Identity in a Minor Key", Games with Shadows
The sad thing is that, even though we know our lives aren't working in certain areas, we are still afraid to change. We are locked into our comfort zone, no matter how self-destructive it may be. Yet, the only way to get out of our comfort zone and to be free of our problems and limitations is to get uncomfortable.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Beyond Positive Thinking
Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms.
C. J. CHERRYH
Chanur's Legacy
Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that count. That's when you find out who you are.
WHISTLER
"Becoming: Part Two", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
DAVID SEDARIS
Naked
To change the name and not the letter,
Is a change for the worst, and not for the better.
ROBERT CHAMBERS
Book of Days
The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Inconstancy
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People
How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
You don't have to love change to be successful, but you need to be willing to accept it. Change is a catalyst for personal growth. It gets you out of a rut, it gives you a fresh start, and it affords you an opportunity to reevaluate your direction. If you resist change, you're really resisting success. Learn flexibility, or learn to like living with your failures.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Motivated to Succeed
The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
The architecture of change involves the design and construction of new patterns, or the reconceptualization of old ones, to make new, and hopefully more productive, actions possible.
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER
The Change Masters