quotations about change
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People
Turn, turn, my wheel! All things must change
To something new, to something strange;
Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
To-morrow be to-day.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Kéramos
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWIN
Partisan Review, Fall 1956
Change moves in spirals, not circles. For example, the sun goes up and then it goes down. But everytime that happens, what do you get? You get a new day. You get a new one. When you breathe, you inhale and you exhale. But every single time that you do that, you're a little bit different then the one before. We're always changing. And its important to know that there are some changes you can't control and that there are others you can.
DAN DUNNE
Half Nelson
Every change is a menace to stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
The world's a scene of changes, and to be
Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
Inconstancy
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Parable of the Talents
When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well let us realize
Oh, that a change can only come
When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah
MICHAEL JACKSON & LIONEL RICHIE
"We Are the World"
A man can always change things. That's what makes him different from the barnyard critters.
MA STONE
All That Money Can Buy
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"
The sad thing is that, even though we know our lives aren't working in certain areas, we are still afraid to change. We are locked into our comfort zone, no matter how self-destructive it may be. Yet, the only way to get out of our comfort zone and to be free of our problems and limitations is to get uncomfortable.
ROBERT ANTHONY
Beyond Positive Thinking
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
How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
It's the way people try not to change that's unnatural. The way we cling to what things were instead of letting them be what they are.
DR. MEREDITH GREY
"With You I'm Born Again", Grey's Anatomy
The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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
Nothing lasts. That's what makes everything ... so precious.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world. And the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.
BILL CLINTON
speech at the Urban League National Convention in San Diego, California, July 27, 1992