quotations about change
The same is not always the same.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Inconstancy
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
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
Lasting change can only come from within.
AHSOKA TANO
"The Academy", Star Wars: The Clone Wars
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
Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech, Oct. 29, 1867
Things do not change; we change.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
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
It's the way people try not to change that's unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are.
DR. MEREDITH GREY
"With You I'm Born Again", Grey's Anatomy
Fear of change is a part of the state of fear man has ever lived in but out of which he has begun to escape. Civilization might be defined indeed as the steps in his escape.
ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS
Fear and Conventionality
Strong communities ... embrace change. New discoveries require us to think differently and approach things differently, to think anew.
TOM VILSACK
speech, Jan. 10, 2006
Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls
Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard
U2
"I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
Things must change
We must rearrange them
Or we'll have to estrange them
All that I'm saying
A game's not worth playing
Over and over again
DEPECHE MODE
"The Sun and the Rainfall"
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
We pay for every change we make ... and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to change.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Vague Thoughts on Art
Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People