Change Quotes

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 Prathe

I don? t really do New Year? s resolutions because I don? t think you should have to wait until December to start working on how to change yourself. I think if you? ve got a problem, you need to fix it now.

Clay Aiken

The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Change starts when someone sees the next step.

William Drayton

Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.

Sydney Harris

People are changed, not by coercion or intimidation, but by example.

Author Unknown

If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Carl Gustav Jung

We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.

Stephen Covey

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Robert Frost, The Black Cottage

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

Carol Burnett

Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

Harry S Truman

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou

The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn... and change.

Carl R. Rogers

One thing we know for sure is that change is certain, progress is not.

Hilary Clinton

Opinions are made to be changed - Or how is the truth to be got at.

Lord Byron

He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.

Benjamin Franklin

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

R. D. Laing

I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behavior.

Charles Handy - The Age of Unreason

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

Nikita Khrushchev

Things do not change we change.

Henry David Thoreau

Love changes darkness into light and makes the heart take a wingless flight.

Helen Steiner Rice

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.

Robert F. Kennedy, 1966 speech

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - From Democracy in America.

Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Lewis Thomas

Let us take things as we find them let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not. We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

John Henry Cardinal Newman

There are times when I think that the ideal library is composed solely of reference books. They are like understanding friends - Always ready to meet your mood, always ready to change the subject when you have had enough of this or that.

Donald J. Adams

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Robyn Davidson

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.

Marilyn Ferguson

If we do not learn from history, we shall be compelled to relive it. True. But if we do not change the future, we shall be compelled to endure it. And that could be worse.

Alvin Toffle

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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

Paul Hawken

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

The minds of the everlasting gods are not changed suddenly.

Homer, The Odyssey

The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

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

Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.

Confucius

We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

Charles Franklin Kettering