Change Quotes

Things do not change; we change.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1970)

Love is an attempt to change a piece of a dream world into reality.

Theodor Reik

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Carol Burnett

You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.

Plato, Dialogues, Theatetus

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.

Karen Kaiser Clark

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 world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Change starts when someone sees the next step.

William Drayton

Your food stamps will be stopped effective March, 1992, because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.

Greenville County (S. C.) Department of Social Services, The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1993

All things change, nothing perishes.

Ovid

I usually make up my mind about a man in ten seconds; and I very rarely change it.

Margaret Thatche

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

Clive James

If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, then make that change.

Michael Jackson, Man In The Mirro

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Saint Francis of Assisi

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

My feelings would never change, but... now she was gone, and this thought meant more to me than the impending destruction of the world.

Roger Zelazny, The Courts of Chaos

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

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

John Adams

Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.

Max Frisch

Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened, but of what men believe happened.

Gerald W. Johnston

The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

Marilyn Ferguson

Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

John Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent

Lawyers and painters can soon change white to black.

Danish prove

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)

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

Nikita Khrushchev

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

The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.

Judge John Kane, US District Court

Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.

John Dryden

The philosophers have already perceived the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

Karl Marx, from "The Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach".

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

Ronald Reagan

Change should be a friend. It should happen by plan, not by accident.

Philip Crosby, Reflections on Quality

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

James Arthur Baldwin

Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase being born is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while dying means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged.

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Fashion changes, style remains.

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

Sylvia Plath

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Everything changes, nothing remains without change.

Buddha

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

Havelock Ellis