Quotes about change

Music can't change the world.

— Bob Geldof

With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.

— David Lloyd George

One person's constant is another person's variable.

— Susan Gerhart

Nobody told me how hard and lonely change is.

— Joan Gilbertson

If things change then they will be different, but if they don't then things will stay the same.

— Peter Gilcrest

All change is not growth; all movement is not forward.

— Ellen Glasgow

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What I possess I would gladly retain. Change amuses the mind, yet scarcely profits.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Human beings, by change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.

— George Gurdjieff

Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.

— Woody Guthrie

Times change, and we change with them.

— William Harrison

Change alone is unchanging.

— Heraclitus

Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

— Heraclitus

There is nothing permanent except change.

— Heraclitus

You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.

— Heraclitus

A woman's mind is cleaner than a man s: She changes it more often.

— Oliver Herford

Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change.

— Herodotus

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

— Eric Hoffer

Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.

— Richard Hooker

Life is made of millions of moments, but we live only one of these moments at a time. As we begin to change this moment, we begin to change our lives.

— Trinidad Hunt

Only man is not content to leave things as they are but must always be changing them, and when he has done so, is seldom satisfied with the result.

— Elspeth Huxley

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.

— I Ching

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.

— I Ching

There are two kinds of fools: One says, This is old therefore it is good. The other one says, This is new therefore it is better.

— Dean William R. Inge

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that ;it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.

— Washington Irving

Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change.

— Jesse Jackson

I do not believe you can do today's job with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow.

— Nelson Jackson

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

— Samuel Johnson

The atom, being for all practical purposes the stable unit of the physical plane, is a constantly changing vortex of reactions.

— Kabbalah

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

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

— Alphonse Karr

For organizations and employees alike, the only real security is the ability to grow, change and adapt.

— Kearney

Many deceive themselves, imagining they'll find happiness in change.

— Thomas Kempis

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

— John F. Kennedy

Let us resolve to be masters, not the victims, of our history, controlling our own destiny without giving way to blind suspicions and emotions.

— John F. Kennedy

Progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator and change has enemies.

— Robert F. Kennedy

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

— Charles F. Kettering

The world goes up and the world goes down, the sunshine follows the rain; and yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown can never come over again.

— Charles Kingsley

A single day is enough to make us a little larger or, another time, a little smaller.

— Paul Klee

The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage of coherent development (as it was understood by Vico, Hegel or Marx), but a shift from one side to another, from front to back, from the back to the left, from the left to the front (as understood by designers dreaming up the fashion for the next season).

— Milan Kundera

There is such a thing as a general revolution which changes the taste of men as it changes the fortunes of the world.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.

— Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa

A rut is a grave with no ends.

— Alan Lampkin

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them -- that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

— Lao-Tzu

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

— Bruce Lee

All things must change to something new, to something strange.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

— Douglas Macarthur

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

— Harold Macmillan

The world will change for the better when people decide they are sick and tired of being sick and tired of the way the world is, and decide to change themselves.

— Sidney Madwed

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

— Norman Mailer

Change hurts. It makes people insecure, confused, and angry. People want things to be the same as they've always been, because that makes life easier. But, if you're a leader, you can't let your people hang on to the past.

— Richard Marcinko

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

— Abraham H. Maslow

Slumber not in the tents of your fathers. The world is advancing.

— Giuseppe Mazzini

The problem is not whether business will survive in competition with business, but whether any business will survive at all in the ;face of social change.

— Laurence J. Mcginley

The only practice that's now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change.

— William Mcgovern

It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.

— Mignon McLaughlin

Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in. Fear and resentment of what is new is really a lament for the memories of our childhood.

— Sir Peter Medawar

Man must be prepared for every event of life, for there is nothing that is durable.

— Menander of Athens

Fear of change perplexes monarchs.

— John Milton

Believe, if thou wilt, that mountains change their place, but believe not that man changes his nature.

— Mohammed

When things come to the worse, they generally mend.

— Susanna Moodie

People don't change. Only their costumes do.

— Gene Moorse

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.

— Mike Murdock

We are shifting from a managerial society to an entrepreneurial society.

— John Naisbitt

To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.

— John Henry Newman

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.

— Herbert A. Otto

All things change, nothing is extinguished. There is nothing in the whole world which is permanent. Everything flows onward; all things are brought into being with a changing nature; the ages themselves glide by in constant movement.

— Ovid

Strong character is brought out by change, weak ones by permanence.

— Jean Paul

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.

— Octavio Paz

Change your thoughts and you change your world.

— Norman Vincent Peale

Change yourself and your work will seem different.

— Norman Vincent Peale

Winners must learn to relish change with the same enthusiasm and energy that we have resisted it in the past.

— Thomas J. Peters

I realized the problem was me and nobody could change me except myself.

— John Petworth

I've always believed that it's important to show a new look periodically. Predictability can lead to failure.

— T. Boone Pickens

In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing.

— Plutarch

Be not the first by which a new thing is tried, or the last to lay the old aside.

— Alexander Pope

Just because everything's different doesn't mean anything's changed.

— Irene Porter

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

Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

— Marcel Proust

Never swap horses crossing a stream.

— American Proverb

Don't change horses while crossing a stream.

— American Proverb

To change and change for the better are two different things

— German Proverb

Change yourself, change your fortunes.

— Portuguese Proverb

A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will.

— Spanish Proverb

There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation; the earth, heavens, and whole world is thereunto subject.

— Sir Walter Raleigh

The moment of change is the only poem.

— Adrienne Rich

When you make a career change there has to be some kind of connection. I remember a Beverly Hills attorney who wanted to become a potato farmer in Oregon. Well, there's a guy who's born to lose.

— Lew Richfield

Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change.

— Pat Riley

Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thin was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.

— Anthony Robbins

For changes to be of any true value, they've got to be lasting and consistent.

— Anthony Robbins

I've continued to recognize the power individuals have to change virtually anything and everything in their lives in an instant. I've learned that the resources we need to turn our dreams into reality are within us, merely waiting for the day when we decide to wake up and claim our birthright.

— Anthony Robbins

Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

— Will Rogers

If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree.

— Jim Rohn

America is the civilization of people engaged in transforming themselves. In the past, the stars of the performance were the pioneer and the immigrant. Today, it is youth and the Black.

— Harold Rosenberg

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.

— Carl Rowan

One of the prevailing sources of misery and crime is in the generally accepted assumption, that because things have been wrong a long time, it is impossible they will ever be right.

— John Ruskin