quotations about change
To change the name and not the letter,
Is a change for the worst, and not for the better.
ROBERT CHAMBERS
Book of Days
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
My life changes all the time.
Things were different when you were mine.
You loved me yesterday.
Now these changes have come to stay.
ROY ORBISON
"Changes"
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
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw, my inability to change. I don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more I realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still ... it feels safer somehow. And if you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar.
EPHRAM BROWN
"My Brother's Keeper", Everwood
Real change happens bit by bit. It takes great effort to become effortless at anything. There are no quick fixes.
GENEEN ROTH
Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything
Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can't step into the same river twice. Life--evolution--the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy--existence itself--is essentially change.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Lathe of Heaven
The same is not always the same.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Vague Thoughts on Art
The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Everything is the same as always.
PETER WEISS
The Tower
We pay for every change we make ... and we pay just as dearly if we refuse to change.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
If you wish to be happy, think not of what is to come nor of that which you have no control over but rather of the now and of that which you are able to change.
CHRISTOPHER PAOLINI
Brisingr
Things do not change; we change.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Nothing lasts. That's what makes everything ... so precious.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Don't go changing to try and please me
You never let me down before
BILLY JOEL
"Just the Way You Are"
A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.
EDMUND BURKE
Reflections on the Revolution in France
Change in all things is sweet.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Strong communities ... embrace change. New discoveries require us to think differently and approach things differently, to think anew.
TOM VILSACK
speech, Jan. 10, 2006