Change Quotes
Alinsky, Saul
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.
Allen, Hervey
Religions change; Beer and Wine remain.
American Proverb
Never swap horses crossing a stream.
Anon.
I change, and so do women too;
But I reflect—which women seldom do.
Tobacco is a filthy weed,
That from the devil doth proceed;
That drains your purse, that burns your clothes,
That makes a chimney of your nose.
Asimov, Isaac
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
Bacon, Francis
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
Badge
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Berenson, Bernard
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Blavatsky, H. P.
When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open Path leads to the changeless change - Non-Being, the glorious state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought.
Blavatsky, H. P.
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an outbreathing and inbreathing of "the Great Breath," which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute - Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.
Bookchin, Murray
To speak of "limits to growth" under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be "persuaded" to limit growth than a human being can be "persuaded" to stop breathing. Attempts to "green" capitalism, to make it "ecological", are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.
Bryant, William Cullen
Weep not that the world changes - did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were a cause indeed to weep.
Bryson, Lyman Lloyd
We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped.
Buddha
Everything changes, nothing remains without change.
Butler, Samuel
All progress is based upon the universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Carter, Jimmy
We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.
Cary, Lucius
When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
Chesterson, G.K.
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.
Ching, I
The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.
Ching, I
Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
Chomsky, Noam
...Insidious is the cry for 'revolution,' at a time when not even the germs of new institutions exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to a basic modification of social life. If there will be a 'revolution' in America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism. We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of a repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression.
Confucius
They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
Cooley, Mason
I change my opinions often, but not my way of thinking.
Cooley, Mason
Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
Cooley, Mason
Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
Cooley, Mason
Change is upsetting. Repetition is tedious. Three cheers for variation!
Cooley, Mason
Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.
Darwin, Charles
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another.... Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained.
Dewey, John
Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment.
Dickens, Charles
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion.... The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.
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In a progressive country change is constant; ... change ... is inevitable.
Disraeli, Benjamin
Change is inevitable in a progressive country. Change is constant.
Duell, Charles H.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Dunlop, Jane
The work of the world is done on hate. All work done well is well done only when persons hate work done shoddily. Justice can exist only when injustice is hated, laws only when lawlessness is hated, and education only when ignorance is hated. Every improvement this world has ever known was brought about because someone hated intolerable conditions.
Dunn, Elizabeth Clark
Change is an easy panacea. It takes character to stay in one place and be happy there.
Einstein, Albert
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
Euripides
All is change; all yields its place and goes.
Ford, Henry
None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
Frisch, Max
Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.
Frontinus, Julius
Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development.
Frost, Robert
They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.
Gandhi, Mahatma
Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
Glasgow, Ellen
All change is not growth; all movementis not forward.
Hamilton, Alexander
Experience teaches that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements, in the most ordinary occupations, are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and by slow gradations. Men would resist changes, so long as even a bare support could be ensured by an adherence to ancient courses, and perhaps even longer.
Harrison, Frederic
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it can never forgive the preaching of a new gospel.
Heraclitus
Everything flows; nothing remains.
Heraclitus
Change alone is unchanging.
Herschel, John Frederick
All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come from on high and are contained in the sacred writings.
Hooker, Richard
Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
Hugo, Victor
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
Hugo, Victor
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Huxley, Aldous
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.
Irving, Washington
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.
Kabbalah
The atom, being for all practical purposes the stable unit of the physical plane, is a constantly changing vortex of reactions.
Karr, Alphonse
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Kempis, Thomas à
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Kennedy, John F.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
Kennedy, Robert F.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Kettering, Charles F.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
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The world goes up and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown Can never come over again.
Kyi, Aung San Suu
The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitides and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution whichaims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution in spirit, the forces which had produced inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration. It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear.
L'Amour, Louis
There will come a time when you think everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
LeGuin, Ursula
You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.
Lilly, John
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
Lincoln, Abraham
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we mustrise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
Lindner, Robert M.
Abroad in the world today is a monstrous falsehood, a consummate fabrication, to which all social agencies have loaned themselves and into which most men, women, and children have been seduced..."the Eleventh Commandment"; for such, indeed, has become the injunction: You Must Adjust.
Machiavelli, Niccolò
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the leadin the introduction of a new order to things.
Machiavelli, Niccolò
A new system is a hard thing to put into place, it is opposed by those that would be disadvantaged by the new system and it receives no support from those that would benefit.
Machiavelli, Niccolò
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.
Masefield, John
They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,
McCluggage, Denise
Change is the only constant. Hanging on is the only sin.
McGinley, Laurence Joseph
The problem is not whether business will survive in competition with business, but whether business will survive at all in the face of social change.
Miller, Henry
The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
Mumford, Lewis
Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.
Nash, Ogden
Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long.
Parker, Dorothy
Ducking for apples; change one letter and it's the story of my life.
Planck, Max
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Plautus, Titus Maccius
Keep what you have; the known evil is best.
Postgate, Richard
Deploring change is the unchangeable habit of all Englishmen.
Prehoda, Dr. Robert W.
In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL(There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to recognize the 'no free lunch' law causes the buffalo hunter mentality syndrome the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because there always has been plenty.
Proust, Marcel
A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
Roman Congregation
The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith. (Decision against Galileo)
Rowan, Carl T.
We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it.
Russell, Bertrand
Change is one thing, progress is another. “Change” is scientific, “progress” is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Sallust
As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.
Schopenhauer, Arthur
All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident.
Schopenhauer, Authur
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
Shaw, George Bernard
Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
Shaw, George Bernard
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
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Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, - but it returneth.
Slater, Phillip
Change can take place only when liberal and radical pressures are both strong. Intelligent liberals have always recognized the debt they owe to radicals, whose existence permits liberals to push further than they would otherwise have dared, all the while posing as compromisers and mediators. Radicals, however, have been somewhat less sensible of their debt to liberals, partly because of the rather single-minded discipline radicals are almost forced to maintain, plagued as they always are by liberal backsliding and timidity on the one hand and various forms of self-destructiveness and romantic posing on the other.... Liberal reforms and radical change are thus complementary rather than antagonistic. Together they make it possible continually to test the limits of what can be done. Liberals never know whether the door is unlocked because they are afraid to try it. Radicals, on the other hand, miss many opportunities for small advances because they are unwilling to settle for so little.
Southern California Oracle
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
Thoreau, Henry David
Things do not change, we do.
Tolstoy, Leo
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.
von Nagyrapolt, Albert
Discovery consists in seeing whateveryone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
Wilde, Oscar
I don't desire to change anything in England except the weather.
Wilde, Oscar
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Wilson, Harold
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
Wollheim, Donald Allen
The tendency to believe that things never change, the inertia of daily existence, is a staple of living. It has always been a delusion.
Zappa, Frank
One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
Zuboff, Shoshana
Technological change defines the horizon of our material world as it shapes the limiting conditions of what is possible and what is barely imaginable. It erodes ... assumptions about the nature of our reality, the “pattern” in which we dwell, and lays open new choices.