quotations about change
Change in all things is sweet.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
DAVID SEDARIS
Naked
Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that count. That's when you find out who you are.
WHISTLER
"Becoming: Part Two", Buffy the Vampire Slayer
My life changes all the time.
Things were different when you were mine.
You loved me yesterday.
Now these changes have come to stay.
ROY ORBISON
"Changes"
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People
You don't have to love change to be successful, but you need to be willing to accept it. Change is a catalyst for personal growth. It gets you out of a rut, it gives you a fresh start, and it affords you an opportunity to reevaluate your direction. If you resist change, you're really resisting success. Learn flexibility, or learn to like living with your failures.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
Motivated to Succeed
Real change happens bit by bit. It takes great effort to become effortless at anything. There are no quick fixes.
GENEEN ROTH
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
The same is not always the same.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Fear of change is a part of the state of fear man has ever lived in but out of which he has begun to escape. Civilization might be defined indeed as the steps in his escape.
ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS
Fear and Conventionality
You gotta run, this world is standin' still
You gotta believe, you can make it up that hill
You gotta know, you can have anything
You gotta be the best that you can be
But don't change for me.
GIN BLOSSOMS
"Don't Change for Me"
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw, my inability to change. I don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more I realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still ... it feels safer somehow. And if you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar.
EPHRAM BROWN
"My Brother's Keeper", Everwood
Things do not change; we change.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
If you wish to be happy, think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and of that which you are able to change.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
Nature obliges everything to change about.
One thing crumbles and falls in the weakness of age;
Another grows in its place from a negligible start.
So time alters the whole nature of the world
And earth passes from one state to another.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Every generation gets a chance to change the world
Pity the nation that won't listen to your boys and girls
Cause the sweetest melody is the one we haven't heard
U2
"I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
BILLY JOEL
"Just the Way You Are"
Nothing lasts. That's what makes everything ... so precious.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden