Quotes about Change
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.
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
The important thing is this To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
... while we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day.
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.
All but Death, can be Adjusted
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. [Chief of Staff, U. S. Army]
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.
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.
The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?
Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
Things do not change, we change.
Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in. ca. 500 BCE
All is flux; nothing stays still.
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
Just because everything is different doesn't mean that everything has changed.
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.
The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.
The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.
You really can change the world if you care enough.
If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it one step at a time.
It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.
We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world -- that I am able to change it in positive ways.
If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
All things change; nothing perishes.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.
Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized for constant change.
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
Life is a progress, and not a station.
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.
Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year.
Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.
You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
If we habitually focus on how to improve things that are already great, can you see how this spirit can transform ourselves, our organizations, families and communities?
He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
In his later years Pablo Picasso was not allowed to roam an art gallery unattended, for he had previously been discovered in the act of trying to improve on one of his old masterpieces.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
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.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
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.
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.
In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps.
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
The important thing is this To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
... while we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day.
The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.
All but Death, can be Adjusted
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. [Chief of Staff, U. S. Army]
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.
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" frequently attributed to Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy, who used it in a speech which his brother, Edward F. (Teddy) Kennedy quoted at RFK's funeral.
The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?
Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change.
The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
Things do not change, we change.
Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in. ca. 500 BCE
All is flux; nothing stays still.
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
Just because everything is different doesn't mean that everything has changed.
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.
For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.
The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!
A person needs at intervals to separate from family and companions and go to new places. One must go without familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.
The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing.
You really can change the world if you care enough.
If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it one step at a time.
It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to.
We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
To me success means effectiveness in the world, that I am able to carry my ideas and values into the world -- that I am able to change it in positive ways.
If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
All things change; nothing perishes.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.
Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized for constant change.
Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
Life is a progress, and not a station.
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.
Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springing of the year.
Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.
You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
If we habitually focus on how to improve things that are already great, can you see how this spirit can transform ourselves, our organizations, families and communities?
He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
In his later years Pablo Picasso was not allowed to roam an art gallery unattended, for he had previously been discovered in the act of trying to improve on one of his old masterpieces.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
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.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
When you are through changing, you are through.
Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
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.
Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
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.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
Anyone who thinks there's safety in numbers hasn't looked at the stock market pages.
Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing.
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.
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
If you're in a bad situation, don't worry it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry it'll change.
Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.
Things do not change; we change.
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.