Quotations about Change

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson


If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit


It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming (Thanks, Michelle)


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


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


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


Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher


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.


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


When you are through changing, you are through. ~Bruce Barton


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


What can we take on trust
in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
~Euripides, Hecuba


They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius


Change always comes bearing gifts. ~Price Pritchett


The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. ~Ellen Glasgow


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


Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864


Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. ~Irene Peter


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~Faith Baldwin


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 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


The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake


Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Mutability"


You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown


Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them. ~Marcel Proust


Stubborness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman


If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown



I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin


We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. ~Lynn Hall


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


Change may come to you in trinkets and I hope it adorns your life gracefully. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com


The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down. ~Jawaharlal Nehru


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


What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott


All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow


Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide


If you want to make enemies, try to change something. ~Woodrow Wilson


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, New York Times, 3 July 1958


Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. ~Pauline R. Kezer


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


We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck, America and Americans


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


The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb


Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight. ~Ezra Pound


Every beginning is a consequence - every beginning ends some thing. ~Paul Valery


It's the most unhappy people who most fear change. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


People don't change. Only their costumes do. ~Gene Moore


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


We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. ~Harrison Ford


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


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


If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~Kurt Lewin


Every single thing changes and is changing always in this world. Yet with the same light the moon goes on shining. ~Saigyo


Things do not change; we change. ~Henry David Thoreau


Our only security is our ability to change. ~John Lilly


Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. ~Bertold Brecht


He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon, "On Innovation," Essays, 1597


Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon


A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar. ~Confucius, Analects


Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicates nothing but the changeableness of the weather. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


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


When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. ~Stanislaw Lec


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