Change Quotes

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

C. G. Jung

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

George Santayana

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France

Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Bertrand Russell

If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.

Philip Crosby, Reflections on Quality

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

Ellen Goodman

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love replused - But it returneth.

Percy B. Shelley

The more things change, the more they are the same.

Alphonse Ka

I want to talk to these people because they stay in power and you change all the time.

Nikita Khrushchev

They say that time changes things, but actually you have to change them yourself.

Andy Warhol

Nothing endures but change.

Heraclitus, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

For if that last day does not occasion an entire extinction, but a change of abode only, what can be more desirable And if it, on the other hand, destroys and absolutely puts an end to us, what can be preferable to having a deep sleep fall on us in the midst of the fatigues of life and, being thus overtaken, to sleep to eternity.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetites.

Quintilian

Our children change us? whether they live or not.

Lois McMaster Bujold, "Barrayar", 1991

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

James Arthur Baldwin

Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.

Max Frisch

Old age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

Red Skelton

Life is like and ever - Shifting kaleidoscope - A slight change, and all patterns alter.

Sharon Salzberg

Everything is connected... no one thing can change by itself.

Paul Hawken

At the beginning of a great national change, the patriot is a scarce man: scorned, ridiculed and forgotten. When his cause succeeds, however, all men will join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

Mark Twain

The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers groceries causes change in our nutrition.

Richard Clark

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

G. C. Lichtenberg

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

Harrison Ford

Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.

Peter Borden

Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant.

Benjamin Disraeli, Speech, Edinburgh (1867)

I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change - within himself, not on the outside.

Joseph Brodsky

Change everything except your loves.

Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

Bank on a life, saving towards the certainty of change Ledger all the happiness, pencil in to rearrange Withdraw all the worry Deposit all the faith Compound all the experience and Recognize when the payment is late.

Unknown

In this world of change naught which comes stays and naught which goes is lost.

Madame Swetchine

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Aldous Huxley

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market - Cart into a chariot of the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.

Kathleen Norris, O Magazine, January 2004

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

Leonardo DaVinci, Notebooks (c. 1500)

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

Robert Quillen

In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Al Rogers

I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.

Maya Angelou

Our destiny changes with our thought we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thought corresponds with our desire.

Orison Swett Marden