quotations about change
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
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
Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Vague Thoughts on Art
The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Chords of Identity in a Minor Key", Games with Shadows
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"
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
Nothing lasts. That's what makes everything ... so precious.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
speech, Oct. 29, 1867
Everything is the same as always.
PETER WEISS
The Tower
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Things change whether you want them to, or not--unless you are dead. Don't hold so hard to the past that you die with it.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
River Marked
One moment the world is as it is. The next, it is something entirely different. Something it has never been before.
ANNE RICE
Pandora
The best way to understand something is to try to change it.
JEROME BRUNER
New York Times, June 7, 2016