quotations about change
Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
Can only mar.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Perfectness"
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
It is said that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe -- that nothing remains in its original state, that each day, each hour, each moment, there is change.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
ERIC HOFFER
attributed, Architectural Record, volume 181
Oh! th' world's a mere kaleidoscope;
Its pictures, brittle bits of glass,
Coloured of fancy, love, and hope,
That quickly from our vision pass;
When we would fix what we admire,
The subtle atoms swift retire!
C. B. LANGSTON
"Change"
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in travelling in a stage-coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.
WASHINGTON IRVING
Tales of a Traveller
Time does not tarry ever ... but change and growth is not in all things and places alike.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction.
JEAN DEBUFFET
attributed, You Can't Plant Tomatoes in Central Park
On every thing are traced decay and change.
Look! how the shifting seasons slip away.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.
TONY BENN
interview with Michael Moore, Sicko
Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
There is in all change something at once agreeable and infamous, something that smacks of infidelity and of moving day.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
An important step, far-reaching in its consequences, was taken when man first sought the cause of change and decay in things themselves and in the laws which appeared to govern things, rather than in powers and forces outside of and beyond them. When the question was first asked, What is it that persists amid all changes and that underlies every change? a new era was about to dawn in the history of man's wonder and his desire to know.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
lecture at Columbia University, Mar. 4, 1908
The architecture of change involves the design and construction of new patterns, or the reconceptualization of old ones, to make new, and hopefully more productive, actions possible.
ROSABETH MOSS KANTER
The Change Masters
Small change, small wonders--these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life. It's a workable economy.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
Small Wonder
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
To change the name and not the letter,
Is a change for the worst, and not for the better.
ROBERT CHAMBERS
Book of Days
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?
Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
BILLY JOEL
"Just the Way You Are"