When you are through changing, you are through.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American Author, Advertising Executive, Politician
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn’t okay now. Change, by definition, changes things.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes and I am left the same. The more things change the more I am the same. I am what I started with, and when it is all over I will be all that is left of me.
—Hugh Prather (b.1938) American Christian Author, Minister, Counselor
I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
It will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men, that most love change.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
If all people are unique, and if they are constantly changing each and every day, then all one can say about any social research finding is that it applied to that group of people on that given day, and given the propensity of humans to be different and to change, then it is unlikely that one would get the same results if one were to repeat the study.
—Wayne Dyer (1940–2015) American Self-Help Author
Taking responsibility means being aware of where and when you are NOT taking responsibility so that you can eventually change.
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, and reality to something more positive … and begin to act accordingly.
—Shakti Gawain (b.1948) American Author, Environmentalist
To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
The times of drastic change are times of passions. We can never really be prepared from that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. A population subjected to drastic change is, thus, a population of misfits, and misfits live and breathe in an atmosphere of passion.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you’re mentally out of your business.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
We are chameleons, and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility, and we are soon wonted to the change and happy in it.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Rather than understand the original cause—a thought—we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
—Unknown
Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
—Marianne Williamson (b.1952) American Activist, Author, Lecturer
When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one, and do without change.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
—Bertrand A. Russell (1872–1970) British Philosopher, Mathematician, Social Critic
Let that which stood in front go behind, let that which was behind advance to the front, let bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions, let the old propositions be postponed.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
It is only an error of judgment to make a mistake, but it argues an infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered. The Chinese say, “The glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall.”
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
Why is it that, as we grow older, we are so reluctant to change? It is not so much that new ideas are painful, for they are not. It is that old ideas are seldom entirely false, but have truth, great truth in them. The justification for conservatism is the desire to preserve the truths and standards of the past; its dangers, of which we are seldom aware, is that in preserving those values, we may miss the infinitely greater riches that lie in the future.
—Dale Turner (1917–2006) American Priest, Columnist, Epigrammist
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
—Peter Drucker (1909–2005) Austrian-born Management Consultant
All that philosophers have done is interpret the world in different ways. It is our job to change it.
—Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist
Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game, but only if you go first.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear, without having so much as a smile for the young future.
—Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) French Philosopher, Writer, Feminist
Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) Indian Hindu Political leader
He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Every so often we hear people clamor for a change. Let’s change the Constitution, change the form of Government, change everything for better or worse except to change the only thing that needs changing first: The human heart and our standard of success and human values.
—William J. H. Boetcker (1873–1962) American Presbyterian Minister
Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
—Heraclitus (535BCE–475BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
In the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there’s no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Canadian-Born American Economist
Force never moves in a straight line, but always in a curve vast as the universe, and therefore eventually returns whence it issued forth, but upon a higher arc, for the universe has progressed since it started.
—Kabbalah Teaching Jewish Mystical, Theosophical Tradition
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
—Harrison Ford (b.1942) American Actor
If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.
—Jim Rohn (1930–2009) American Entrepreneur, Author, Motivational Speaker
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
—Helen Keller (1880–1968) American Author
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley (1895–1972) British Writer, Critic
You do not notice changes in what is always before you.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
Some folks won’t look up until they are flat on their backs
—Indian Proverb
Use a gyroscope to demonstrate how, over time, we become fixed in our ways, personalities, and, as a mature person, psychologically resistant to change. With EFFORT, however, we can make changes. We are not today exactly what we were yesterday. We are almost imperceptibly different. We do change with time and we can control to an extent the direction of the changes.
—Unknown
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian Head of State
The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing.
—Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (1879–1964) American-born British Politician
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.
—Seth Godin (b.1960) American Entrepreneur
I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring.
—Dodie Smith (1896–1990) British Novelist, Playwright, Writer
If our thinking is clear, how could work or money be the problem? Our thinking is all we need to change.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.
—Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher
Engendering behavior change can be far more difficult than we might imagine. In some cases, the person [trying to change] simply doesn’t have the self-discipline to habituate it.
—Marty Nemko (b.1950) American Career Coach
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
—Charles Dickens (1812–70) English Novelist
The most unchangeable truth is change.
—Hans Taeger