Quotations about Change
The birds are molting. If only man could molt also - his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions.
~James Allen
Nowadays change is around every corner; in my day it was only around the expected ones.
~V.L. Allineare
We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~W.H. Auden
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
~Saint Augustine
He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
~Francis Bacon
Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
~Faith Baldwin
When you are through changing, you are through.
~Bruce Barton
Stubborness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.
~Glen Beaman
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
~William Blake
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
~Bertold Brecht
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
~George Carlin
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
~John Ciardi
A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar.
~Confucius
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
~Confucius
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
~Charles Darwin
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
~W. Edwards Deming
Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
~Mary Engelbreit
What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
~Euripides
We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.
~Harrison Ford
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.
~Anatole France
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
~Victor Frankl
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
~John Kenneth Galbraith
Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.
~Robert C. Gallagher
Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!
~Andre Gide
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
~Ellen Glasgow
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
~Ellen Glasgow
We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.
~Lynn Hall
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.
~Washington Irving
Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights.
~Pauline R. Kezer
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
~Stanislaw Lec
If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
~Kurt Lewin
Our only security is our ability to change.
~John Lilly
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
~Mignon McLaughlin
What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
~Mignon McLaughlin
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
~Henry Miller
No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times.
~Michel Montaigne
People don't change. Only their costumes do.
~Gene Moore
The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down. ~Jawaharlal Nehru
Growth is the only evidence of life.
~John Henry Newman
After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.
~Alfred Edward Perlman
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
~Irene Peter
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight.
~Ezra Pound
Change always comes bearing gifts.
~Price Pritchett
Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.
~Marcel Proust
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
~Arthur Schopenhauer
Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history.
~Joan Wallach Scott
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.
~William H. Seward
The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
~George Bernard Shaw
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
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. ~John A. Simone, Sr.
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
~John Steinbeck
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.
~Shunryu Suzuki
Things do not change; we change.
~Henry David Thoreau
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me.
~Author Unknown
If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.
~Author Unknown
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
~Author Unknown (commonly misattributed to Charles Darwin)
You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish.
~Author Unknown
Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing.
~Paul Valery
Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.
~Laurens van der Post
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
~Harold Wilson
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
~Woodrow Wilson