quotations about change
The people who keep back change are often exasperating. But they have their work to perform, highly important work, too. Their very opposition, besides helping to weed out the weak ideas, gives the true ideas greater strength. For an idea is not worth much unless it can sturdily make its way through opposition and display toughness of fiber.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Change", Reactions and Other Essays
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
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
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
People do not change, they are merely revealed.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
Can only mar.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Perfectness"
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.... This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Asimov on Science Fiction
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
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
People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.
LAWRENCE BLOCK
In the Midst of Death
All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
foreword, Tales from Earthsea
Lasting change can only come from within.
AHSOKA TANO
"The Academy", Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Change isn't always good. Sometimes changing things is a terrible mistake.
BOB BARKER
Esquire, Jul. 2007
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"
Change happened and you thought it was forever, and immediately there were all the enemies of that change making common cause and meeting in the cloakrooms.
C. J. CHERRYH
Chanur's Legacy
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
I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
DAVID SEDARIS
Naked
You can't change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world
DEPECHE MODE
"New Dress"