Change Quotes

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
– Paul Boese
Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.
– Dale Carnegie
Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, surprise you, disappoint you, but they can't prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you're presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power.
– Blaine Lee
How do I change?
If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labour.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.
Today I will be the master of my emotions.
– Og Mandino
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company ...a church ...a home.The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past ...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.
We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ...we are in charge of our attitudes.
– Charles Swindoll
The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. . . . Civilisation is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilisation, either in the general society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civilisation there is always an element of unrest. For sensitiveness to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilised order survives on its merits, and is transformed by its power of Recognizing its imperfections.
– Alfred North Whitehead
There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things, recurring in some particular embodiments whatever field we explore - the spirit of change, and the spirit of conservation. There can be nothing real without both. Mere change without conservation is a passage from nothing to nothing. . . . Mere conservation without change cannot conserve. For after all, there is a flux of circumstance, and the freshness of being evaporates under mere repetition.
– Alfred North Whitehead
From reincarnated sources and through prenatal causes I was born with unquenchable hope and unfaltering faith in God and guardian spirits. I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointments and worries but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life.I always expected wonderful things to happen to me. In some of my hardest days when everything went wrong with everybody at home and all my manuscripts came back for six weeks at a time without one acceptance, I recall looking out of my little north window upon the lonely road bordered with lonelier Lombardy poplars, and thinking, ‘Before night something beautiful will happen to change everything.’ There was so much I wanted. …Once I read a sentence which became a life motto to me. ‘If you haven’t what you like, try to like what you have.’ I bless the author for that phrase it was such a help to me.
– Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Change, when it comes, cracks everything open.
– Dorothy Allison
All appears to change when we change.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix.
– Christina Baldwin
Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.
– Bernard M. Baruch
For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.
– Ingrid Bengis
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
– Peter Borden
History is powerful stuff. One day your world is fine. The next day it's knocked for a metaphysical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change what I had for breakfast?
– Henry Bromel
Engineering is not merely knowing and being knowledgeable, like a walking encyclopedia; engineering is not merely analysis; engineering is not merely the possession of the capacity to get elegant solutions to non-existent engineering problems; engineering is practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change... Engineers operate at the interface between science and society...
– Dean Gordon Brown
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
– Pearl S. Buck
Our children change us…whether they live or not.
– Lois McMaster Bujold
A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
– Lois McMaster Bujold
Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Miracles: You do not have to look for them. They are there, 24
7, beaming like radio waves all around you. Put up the antenna, turn up the volume - snap... crackle... this just in, every person you talk to is a chance to change the world...
– Hugh Elliott
History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
– James A. Forude
Affirmations are like prescriptions for certain aspects of yourself you want to change.
– Jerry Frankhauser
Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.
– Max Frisch
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.
– Ellen Goodman
It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
– James Gordon
Women have more to offer this world than just a fallopian tube. Nothing is going to change until you quit looking at us as just sperm receptacles.
– Barbara Hall
We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.
– Lynn Hall
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
– Kin Hubbard
Popularity? It is glory's small change.
– Victor Hugo
Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
– William James
Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.
– Robert Francis Kennedy
In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth.
– Susanne K. Langer
I won't change anything because I think the most important thing is being yourself and that's what I'm going to continue to do.
– Avril Lavigne
The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all.
– Doris Lessing
Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.
– Peter McWilliams
What is it about possessing things? Why do we feel the need to own what we love, and why do we become jerks when we do? We've all been there-- you want something, to possess it. By possessing something you lose it. You finally win the girl of your dreams, the first thing you do is change her. The little things she does with her hair, the way she wears her clothes or the way she chews her gum. Pretty soon what you like, what you changed, what you don't like, blends together like a watercolor in the rain.
– Jeff Melvoin
It just seem like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world... Music has been so much more.
– Moby
Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.
– Kathleen Norris
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
– Laurence J. Peter
I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.
– Sylvia Plath
You are young, my son, and, as the years go by, time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain therefore awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.
– Plato
Life is like and ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.
– Sharon Salzberg
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience.
– George Santayana
One person can have a profound effect on another. And two people...well, two people can work miracles. They can change a whole town. They can change the world.
– Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
– William Shakespeare
Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.
– King Whitney Jr.
Become the change you want to see - those are words I live by.
– Oprah Winfrey
If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.
– Oprah Winfrey
Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
– Malcolm X
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?
– Chuck Palahniuk
Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it is the only way they can really get anything finished.
– Chuck Palahniuk
You may not be able to change a situation, but with humor you can change your attitude about it.
– Allen Klein
You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change.
– Sharron Angle
You know, I think we Indians are afraid to show and celebrate our happiness, lest things change around. But I feel that it's okay to be sad and okay to show when you are happy.
– Shahrukh Khan
You have to believe that it's through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.
– David Miliband
You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.
– Nicholas D. Kristof
Yeah, exactly, you can talk about politics in music, you can talk about something else, but that's always going to change, and love is never going to change.
– Enrique Iglesias
Women tell me they are different since 21 May - the day I was arrested - it's a positive change, they believe now.
– Manal al-Sharif
Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.
– Kenneth L. Pike
Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married?
– Barbra Streisand
Why be boring? Have some fun. Rock shows should be like movies: I don't go to a movie hoping it'll change my life.
– Alice Cooper
White actors still get way more money in Hollywood. It's been that way for a very long time. I hope it'll change, but it's a matter of forcing that change.
– Idris Elba
While a large segment of the art world has obsessed over a tiny number of stars and their prices, an aesthetic shift has been occurring. It's not a movement - movements are more sure of themselves. It's a change of mood or expectation, a desire for art to be more than showy effects, big numbers, and gamesmanship.
– Jerry Saltz
When you're an artist, there's always a moment in your life when you think you're not inspired and instead of doing things and instead of travel and instead of falling in love, you're just depressed, so you don't move, so you don't change. So you're not inspired.
– Melanie Laurent
When you're a kid, you have these big ideas and these big dreams to make a change, or maybe you feel like you can't make a difference.
– AnnaSophia Robb
When you're a famous, successful person at 16 years old, the rules change for you. Everybody is doing things for you to make life easier so you can go out and play. And I think you miss out on lot of growing up and a lot of reality checks.
– Chris Evert
When you first have a baby your life doesn't change. I mean, you have a little less sleep and you drag these cuddly things around you and it's just amazing. But you still get to be you. Once they get to, like, five, six and school and it starts to get, like, 'Wow, they got real problems. They're my responsibility.' Oh my God. That is overwhelming.
– Gwen Stefani
When we're on set, we kind of joke around, and when we're rehearsing, we change up the scenes and make each other laugh. We lighten up the mood. The blooper reel is going to be amazing on 'New Moon.'
– Kellan Lutz
When time and space and change converge, we find place. We arrive in Place when we resolve things. Place is peace of mind and understanding. Place is knowledge of self. Place is resolution.
– Abdullah Ibrahim
When my dad was badly weakened by the flu and my mom wanted to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room, he wouldn't go unless he could shave first and change into a nice shirt and a pair of slacks.
– Rich Lowry
When I read the script, I liked the script very much and I thought it was a marvelous part for her, because I think it is a change of pace. I mean, we know how wonderful she is in romantic comedy.
– Albert Finney
When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?
– Wynton Marsalis
What we do every night is we change out the set list as much as we can to make sure that (fans can) go home and tell their friends they experienced something unique and cool.
– Isaac Hanson
What use is revelation or religion if it doesnt change anything?
– Abu Bakar Bashir
What politicians want to create is irreversible change because when you leave office someone changes it back again.
– Estelle Morris
What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.
– Malcolm Mclaren
What makes me sad about school is that the people who are unhappy are unhappy because they don't believe it will change. And I just want to say: 'It does! High school ends and it's over.' I will tell anyone that it's OK to be unhappy at school, make lots of mistakes and then it will be over.
– Alice Englert
What is amazing for a woman of my age is that I change as the world is changing-and changing very, very fast. I don't think my mother had that opportunity to change.
– Jeanne Moreau
What does Burma have to give the United States? We can give you the opportunity to engage with people who are ready and willing to change a society.
– Aung San Suu Kyi
What are the Democrats, the party of Jim Matheson, telling them? The message of the Democrats is that the Amercian dream is over. 'The government is all you have. Give up your dreams, and the government will save you, the government will heal you, the government will be your hope and change.' We know here in Utah, none of that is true.
– Mia Love
We're all entitled to opinions about how art institutions should behave, and entitled to voicing those opinions through whatever means available to us. We're also allowed to change or modify our opinions.
– Jerry Saltz
We will have to continue to improve our human intelligence system-something that was, unfortunately, lacking in the years which led up to September 11. This is going to be a continuing process of change.
– John Sununu
We need to dig deep and give people a reason to be optimistic just as Obama is doing in America. Because in the same way that outcome of the U.S. elections will change the course of events there and around the world, so too do politics here in Britain.
– Lucy Powell
We need the help of other member countries and leaders who, like us, want to see a change in Europe's direction. That's also my logic when I tell voters that electing me president will not only shape France's future, but also initiate change across all of Europe.
– Francois Hollande
We need fundamental change. In the past, national development led to people's happiness but now the link between national growth and improvement in people's lives has been severed.
– Park Geun-hye
We need a grassroots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy, healthy successful lives.
– Mark Hyman
We must continue to pursue peace through diplomacy, but we must also not shrink from our responsibility through the option of strength. We must take advantage of internal resistance and change from within Iran to avert this path of mutual destruction.
– Michael McCaul
We hope President Obama will now respect the will of the people, change course, and commit to making the changes they are demanding. To the extent he is willing to do this, we are ready to work with him.
– John Boehner
We cannot escape that Hollywood is in the middle of a wave of technological change. The current angst over all the implications of new entertainment technology is nothing new.
– Michael Eisner
We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.
– Charles R. Swindoll
We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.
– Barbara Jordan
We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it's only us. And we're only responsible to make ourselves happy.
– Tom Brady
War continues to divide people, to change them forever, and I write about it both because I want people to understand the absolute futility of war, the 'pity of war' as Wilfred Owen called it.
– Michael Morpurgo
Under the Healthy Americans Act, you're in charge of your health care - not your employer. If you lose your job, change jobs or just can't find a job, your health insurance is guaranteed to stick with you.
– Ron Wyden
Traditional marriage between a man and a woman has been a cornerstone of our society for generations. If we are going to change that, it ought to be done by the will of the people.
– Steve Chabot
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.
– Maxine Hong Kingston
To maximize our potential to enhance our health and our knowledge, we should remain open to new understanding and evolving technology or resources that might inspire a change in our approach to these important questions.
– Samuel Wilson
To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change.
– Charles Horton Cooley