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Change

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Change is to become something different or to make something into something else.


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

A

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  • Whole world's changing, even I see that now. Our time... has pretty much passed. They don't want folk like us no more. It's their rules or be damned with you. But I tried in the end... I did.
  • Sometimes, to make a little bit of change in people’s lives they just need a tent or a little bit of food, a bit of support or a little education.
  • J'avais vu les grands, mais je n'avais pas vu les petits.
    • I had seen the great, but I had not seen the small.
    • Vittorio Alfieri, Reason for Changing his Democratic Opinions. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • For the ordinary man, instability—change—means dislocation, war, uncertainty, misery, and death.
    • Poul Anderson, The Long Way Home (1978 Ace Books restored edition), Chapter 17
  • Our images/feelings/thoughts have to be conflicted before we see the need for change.
    • Gloria E. Anzaldúa 2001 Forward in This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color 4th Edition (2015)
  • Nè spegner può per star nell'acqua il foco;
    Nè può stato mutar per mutar loco.
  • Joy comes and goes, hope ebbs and flows
    Like the wave;
    Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men.
    Love lends life a little grace,
    A few sad smiles; and then,
    Both are laid in one cold place,
    In the grave.
    • Matthew Arnold, A Question, Stanza 1. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Il n'y a rien de changé en France; il n'y a qu'un Français de plus.
    • Nothing has changed in France, there is only a Frenchman the more.
    • Proclamation pub. in the Moniteur (April, 1814), as the words of Comte D'Artois (afterwards Charles X), on his entrance into Paris. Originated with Count Beugnot. Instigated by Talleyrand. See M. de Vaulabelle—Hist. des Deux Restaurations. 3d Édition II. Pp. 30, 31. Also Contemporary Review, Feb., 1854

B

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  • Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.… Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
    • James Baldwin in "As Much Truth As One Can Bear" in The New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962); as quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 114
  • Never underestimate change. What seems simple at the top is magnified at lower echelons and is extremely disruptive. It is a festering crisis that needs attention from senior management or else loyalty, efficiency, and productivity will suffer.
  • The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes.
  • my slogan is “The Pen is Funnier than the Sword”—which I really believe. I’m committed to non-violent change.
  • Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
    • Bertolt Brecht, as quoted in Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations (1976) by John Gordon Burke and Ned Kehde, p. 224, also in The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) by John Cook, p. 390
  • There has been one constant, as far back as we can understand: The world is always changing.
    • Adrienne Maree Brown "The Green Generation" (2007) anthologized in The Global Warming Reader edited by Bill McKibben (2012)
  • Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure.
    • Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra, Stanza 27. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Weep not that the world changes—did it keep
    A stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.
  • We feel change ... is likely to work against us. ... We do not think we have great ability to predict ... where change is going to lead. We think we have some ability to find businesses where we don't think change is going to be very important. ... we think we know in a general way what the soft drink industry, or the shaving industry, or the candy business is going to look like 10 or 20 years from now.
  • A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
  • And one by one in turn, some grand mistake
    Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.
  • How chang'd since last her speaking eye
    Glanc'd gladness round the glitt'ring room,
    Where high-born men were proud to wait—
    Where Beauty watched to imitate.
    • Lord Byron, Parisina, Stanza 10, in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Shrine of the mighty! can it be,
    That this is all remains of thee?
  • All that you touch/You Change./All that you Change/Changes you./The only lasting truth/Is Change./God/Is Change.

C

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  • Waiting for the time to pass you by; hope the winds of change will change your mind.
  • To-day is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful; and if Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope.
    • Thomas Carlyle, Essays, Characteristics.in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • we live in a time when change comes rapidly-a time when much of that change is, at least for long periods, irrevocable. This is what makes our own task so urgent. It is not often that a generation is challenged, as we today are challenged. For what we fail to do-what we let go by default, can perhaps never be done.
  • When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
    • Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, as quoted in Douglas Macleane, Reason, Thought, and Language; Or, The Many and the One : A Revised System of Logical Doctrine in Relation to the Forms of Idiomatic Discourse (1906)
  • Tempora mutantur
    • Times change.
    • Also Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
    • Times change, and we change with them.
    • 16th century German and English origin, presumably influenced by Ovid. See Wikipedia for extensive discussion.
    • Ovid's Fasti VI, 771–772 reads:
      Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
      et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.
    • In German, in 1554 Caspar Huberinus varies Ovid's verse, rewriting the second line:[1]
      Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis;
      Tempora mutantur, nosque mutamur in illis.
      "Times are slipping away, and we get older by (through, during, with, because of) the silent years"
      (nosque = the same as nos et, with different hexameter rhythm)
  • Sancho Panza by name is my own self, if I was not changed in my cradle.
  • We only have to look around us to see how complexity and psychic temperature are still rising: and rising no longer on the scale of the individual but now on that of the planet. This indication is so familiar to us that we cannot but recognize the objective, experiential, reality of a transformation of the planet as a whole.
  • An id exploratum cuiquam potest esse, quomodo sese habitarum sit corpus, non dico ad annum sed ad vesperam?
    • Can any one find out in what condition his body will be, I do not say a year hence, but this evening?
    • Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, II. 228. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Non tam commutandarum, quam evertendarum rerum cupidi.
    • Longing not so much to change things as to overturn them.
    • Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.), II. 1. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Nihil est aptius ad delectationem lectoris quam temporum varietates fortunæque vicissitudines.
    • There is nothing better fitted to delight the reader than change of circumstances and varieties of fortune.
    • Cicero, Epistles, V. 12. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Nemo doctus unquam (multa autem de hoc genere scripta sunt) mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.
    • No sensible man (among the many things that have been written on this kind) ever imputed inconsistency to another for changing his mind.
    • Cicero, Epistolæ ad Atticus, XVI. 7. 3. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Asperius nihil est humili cum surgit in altum.
    • Nothing is more annoying than a low man raised to a high position.
    • Claudianus, In Eutropium, I, 181. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Still ending, and beginning still.

D

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  • On commence par être dupe,
    On finit par être fripon.
    • We begin by being dupe, and end by being rogue.
    • Eustache Deschamps, Réflexion sur le Jeu. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.
  • The vibrancy of change permeates the air around all of our nations, human and more-than-human.
    • Grace Dillon Afterword to New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl (2023)
  • Change is inevitable in a progressive country,
    Change is constant.
    • Benjamin Disraeli, Edinburgh (Oct. 29, 1867). in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • In a progressive country change is constant;… change … is inevitable.
    • Benjamin Disraeli, Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (1867-10-29); reported in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), vol. 2, part 4, p. 487
  • Will change the Pebbles of our puddly thought
    To Orient Pearls.
    • Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, Second Week, Third Day, Part 1. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96

E

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  • Change happens because of individuals who team up with others or inspire others. And soon you’ve got 10 or 100 or 1,000, and then you’ve got a movement.
  • Change based on principle is progress. Constant change without principle becomes chaos.
    • Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address at the Cow Palace on Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention (August 23, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived from the original on January 25, 2021.
  • Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring.

F

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  • We are at a very exciting moment in history, perhaps a turning point, said Ilya Prigogine, who won the 1977 Nobel prize for a theory that describes transformations, not only in the physical sciences but also in society—the role of stress and "perturbations" that can thrust us into a new, higher order. Science, he said, is proving the reality of a deep cultural vision. The poets and philosophers were right in their intimations of an open, creative universe. Transformation, innovation, evolution—these are the natural responses to crisis. The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to be feared or subdued. Our pathology is our opportunity.
  • In every age, said scientist-philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, man has proclaimed himself at a turning point in history. " A n d to a certain extent, as he is advancing on a rising spiral, he has not been wrong. But there are moments when this impression of transformation becomes accentuated and is thus particularly justified." Teilhard prophesied the phenomenon central to this book: a conspiracy of men and women whose new perspective would trigger a critical contagion of change. Throughout history virtually all efforts to remake society began by altering its outward form and organization.
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
  • Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c'est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.
    • 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, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard Pt. II, ch. 4 (1881)
  • Although we accept the inevitability of change, humans meet it with a lot of resistance. In most cases, change threatens those in positions of advantage and for the most part they are there in the first place to keep things the way they are. ...Yet at every turn, vested interests (those who have the most to gain in keeping things the way they are) oppose even technological changes... And so it goes....
    Until scientific inquiry came of age, human beings could not comprehend their relationship to the physical world, so they invented their own explanations. These explanations tended to be simplistic and in many cases, harmful. For example, if one knows a tidal wave is approaching and chooses to stay and pray for deliverance rather than leaving, this could be detrimental to his/her survival... Scientists ask the question “what do we have here?” and then they proceed to do experiments to determine the nature of the physical world... Better values, ideals, and behavior cannot be fully realized while there is still hunger, unemployment, deprivation, war, and poverty.

G

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  • Great change begins with small steps taken at home.
    • Amy Goodman Standing Up To the Madness: Ordinary Heroes In Extraordinary Times with David Goodman (2008)
  • Social change does not spring forth from the minds of generals or presidents-in fact, change is often blocked by the powerful. Change starts with ordinary people working in their communities. And that's where media should start as well.
    • Amy Goodman The Exception to the Rulers written with David Goodman (2004)

H

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  • The times change, and we change with them.
    • English variant of traditional Latin:
    Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis
    Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis
    Illa vices quasdam res habet, illa vices.
    All things are changed, and we change with them
    that matter has some changements, it (does have) changements (colloquially, that matter changes is demonstrated by the changes in matter)
    • Attributed by Matthew Borbonius as the motto of Lothair I
  • You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
  • Change is a difficult, often violent process, both for individuals and for whole species. The more rapidly change, the uglier the conflict.
  • Good to the heels the well-worn slipper feels
    When the tired player shuffles off the buskin;
    A page of Hood may do a fellow good
    After a scolding from Carlyle or Ruskin.
  • Nor can one word be chang'd but for a worse.
    • Homer, The Odyssey, Book VIII, line 192. Pope's translation. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
  • Non si male nunc et olim
    Sic erit.
    • If matters go badly now, they will not always be so.
    • Horace, Carmina, II. 10. 17. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Plerumque gratæ divitibus vices.
    • Change generally pleases the rich.
    • Horace, Carmina, III. 29. 13. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Non sum qualis eram.
    • I am not what I once was.
    • Horace, Carmina, IV. 1. 3. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Amphora cœpit
    Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?
    • A vase is begun; why, as the wheel goes round, does it turn out a pitcher?
    • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), XXI. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo?
    • With what knot shall I hold this Proteus, who so often changes his countenance?
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 90. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Quod petiit spernit, repetit quod nuper omisit.
    • He despises what he sought; and he seeks that which he lately threw away.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 98. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Diruit, ædificat, mutat quadrata rotundis.
    • He pulls down, he builds up, he changes squares into circles.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 100. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus.
    • The lazy ox wishes for horse-trappings, and the steed wishes to plough.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 14. 43. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Deus hæc fortasse benigna
    Reducet in sedem vice.
    • God perchance will by a happy change restore these things to a settled condition.
    • Horace, Epistles, XIII. 7. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Humans are allergic to change. They love to say, "We've always done it this way." I try to fight that. That's why I have a clock on my wall that runs counter-clockwise.
    • Grace Hopper, The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper (1987)
    • Unsourced variant: The most dangerous phrase in the language is, "We've always done it this way."

I

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  • 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.

J

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  • So many great nobles, things, administrations,
    So many high chieftains, so many brave nations.
    So many proud princes, and power so splendid,
    In a moment, a twinkling, all utterly ended.
    • Jacopone, De Contemptu Mundi. Abraham Coles, Translation in "Old Gems in New Settings." P. 75
  • As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the roving heart gathers no affections.
    • Mrs. Jameson, Studies, Detached Thoughts, Sternberg's Novels. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Some people react to fear by seeking security, change, control. The rest accept the change and just go on about their lives.
  • Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
    • Jeremiah, XIII. 23. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.
    • Samuel Johnson, The Idler, No. 57. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • We do not escape our boundaries or our innermost being. We do not change. It is true we may be transformed, but we always walk within our boundaries, within the marked-off circle.

K

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Change, although it involves risks, is the law of life. ~ Robert Kennedy
Great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims. ~ Robert Kennedy
Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. ~ John F. Kennedy
  • We forget that people can change, including our own people; including ourselves.
    • Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz To Be a Radical Jew in the Late 20th Century in The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology (1986)
  • As activists we need to believe in vision and imagination; communicate a sense of possibility. Bleakness is not the whole story, and escape is not the only alternative. Change is possible...history is shaped by people operating as people do, making choices with their consciousness limited by material reality and by their perceptions of material reality. This means by their perceptions of possibility too. Simply put, if people don't think change is possible, they won't try.
    • Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz “Nine Suggestions For Radicals, or Lessons From the Gulf War” in The Issue is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance (1992)
  • To say that the future will be different from the present is, to scientists, hopelessly self-evident. I observe regretfully that in politics, however, it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism, or branded as subversion. There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed. It hardly seems necessary to point out in California - of all States -- that change, although it involves risks, is the law of life.
  • Just because we cannot see clearly the end of the road, that is no reason for not setting out on the essential journey. On the contrary, great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims.
    • Farewell statement, Warsaw, Poland, reported in The New York Times (2 July 1964)
  • Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
    • Day of Affirmation, address delivered at the University of Cape Town, South Africa (June 6, 1966); reported in the Congressional Record (June 6, 1966), vol. 112, p. 12430
  • But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past are certain to miss the future.
    • John F. Kennedy, in a speech at Paulskirche in Frankfurt, West Germany, 25 June 1963; as printed in John Fitzgerald Kennedy, The Burden and the Glory (1964), p. 115
    • Variant: Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
      • Documents on International Affairs, 1963, Royal Institute of International Affairs, ed. Sir John Wheeler Wheeler-Bennett, p. 36
    • Variant: But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
  • The world goes up and the world goes down.
    And the sunshine follows the rain;
    And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown
    Can never come over again.
    • Charles Kingsley, Songs, II. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Change tends to fill people with this incredible fear.

L

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For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance... to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money. ~ Bernard Lietaer
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. ~ Abraham Lincoln
  • Coups de fourches ni d'étrivières,
    Ne lui font changer de manières.
    • Neither blows from pitchfork, nor from the lash, can make him change his ways.
    • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, II. 18. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • They met with cold words, and yet colder looks:
    Each was changed in himself, and yet each thought
    The other only changed, himself the same.
  • A great change in life is like a cold bath in winter — we all hesitate at the first plunge.
  • Any great change is like cold water in winter — one shrinks from the first plunge; and a lover may be excused who shivers a little at the transmigration into a husband. (Vol.II, Chapter 7)
  • It has nothing to do with being anti-gay, or anti-black, or anti-Latino, or anything like that. Latino characters should stay Latino. The Black Panther should certainly not be Swiss. I just see no reason to change that which has already been established when it’s so easy to add new characters. I say create new characters the way you want to. Hell, I’ll do it myself.
  • Time fleeth on,
    Youth soon is gone,
    Naught earthly may abide;
    Life seemeth fast,
    But may not last—
    It runs as runs the tide.
    • Charles Godfrey Leland, Many in One, Part II, Stanza 21. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • It is owing to the changeability of sciences and philosophy that they are so unproductive of glory, either at the hands of contemporaries or posterity. For when new discoveries, or new ideas and conjectures, greatly alter the condition of this or that science from its present state, how will the writings and thoughts of men now celebrated in these sciences be regarded? Who, for instance, now reads Galileo's works? Yet in his time they were most wonderful; nor could better and nobler books, full of greater discoveries and grander conceptions, be then written on such subjects. But now every tyro in physics or mathematics surpasses Galileo in his knowledge. Again, how many people in the present day read the writings of Francis Bacon? Who troubles himself about Malebranche? And how much time will soon be bestowed on the works of Locke, if the science almost founded by him progresses in future as rapidly as it gives promise of doing?
  • Truly the very intellectual force, industry, and labour, which philosophers and scientists expend in the pursuit of their glory, are in time the cause of its extinction or obscurément. For by their own great exertions they open out a path for the still further advancement of the science, which in time progresses so rapidly that their writings and names fall gradually into oblivion. And it is certainly difficult for most men to esteem others for a knowledge greatly inferior to their own. Who can doubt that the twentieth century will discover error in what the wisest of us regard as unquestionable truths, and will surpass us greatly in their knowledge of the truth?
  • For the first time in human history we have available the production technologies to create unprecedented abundance. All this converges into an extraordinary opportunity to combine the hardware of our technologies of abundance and the software of archetypal shifts. Such a combination has never been available at this scale or at this speed: it enables us to consciously design money to work for us, instead of us for it. I propose that we choose to develop money systems that will enable us to attain sustainability and community healing on a local and global scale. These objectives are in our grasp within less than one generation's time. Whether we materialize them or not will depend on our capacity to cooperate with each other to consciously reinvent our money.
  • The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
  • I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League, have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.
    • Abraham Lincoln, to a delegation of the National Union League who congratulated him on his nomination as the Republican candidate for President, June 9, 1864. As given by J. F. Rhodes—Hist. of the U. S. from the Compromise of 1850, Volume IV, p. 370. Same in Nicolay and Hay Lincoln's Complete Works, Volume II, p. 532. Different version in Appleton's Cyclopedia. Raymond—Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, Chapter XVIII, p. 500. (Ed. 1865) says Lincoln quotes an old Dutch farmer, "It was best not to swap horses when crossing a stream".
  • But the nearer the dawn the darker the night,
    And by going wrong all things come right;
    Things have been mended that were worse,
    And the worse, the nearer they are to mend.
  • The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships. Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goals. For Black and white, old and young, lesbian and heterosexual women alike, this can mean new paths to our survival.
  • Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose.

M

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  • Omnia mortali mutantur lege creata,
    Nec se cognoscunt terræ vertentibus annis,
    Et mutant variam faciem per sæcula gentes.
    • Everything that is created is changed by the laws of man; the earth does not know itself in the revolution of years; even the races of man assume various forms in the course of ages.
    • Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, 515. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • There are moments that change everything, and once things have been changed, they do not change back.
  • Do not think that years leave us and find us the same!
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto II, Stanza 3
  • Weary the cloud falleth out of the sky,
    Dreary the leaf lieth low.
    All things must come to the earth by and by,
    Out of which all things grow.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), The Wanderer, Earth's Havings, Book III. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • The past is being ground to pieces by the mill of inexorable, incomprehensible change.
    • Hans Meyerhoff, Time in Literature (1955)
  • In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
    On half the nations, and with fear of change
    Perplexes monarchs.
  • To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
    • John Milton, Lycidas, line 193. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Nous avons changé tout cela.
    • We have changed all that.
    • Molière, Le Médecin Malgré lui (1666), II. 6. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."
    • Michel de Montaigne, Of Vanity, Book III, Chapter IX. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • All that's bright must fade,—
    The brightest still the fleetest;
    All that's sweet was made
    But to be lost when sweetest.
    • Thomas Moore, National Airs, All That's Bright Must Fade. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • to change the world, we have to change ourselves-even sometimes out most cherished, block-hard convictions.
    • Cherríe Moraga This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Fourth Edition (2015)

N

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O

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All things change. ~ Ovid
Nothing is permanent in all the world.
All things are fluent; every image forms,
Wandering through change. ~ Ovid
  • Omnia mutantur, nihil interit.
    • All things change, nothing perishes.
    • Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV. 165. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Nihil est toto, quod perstet, in orbe.
    Cuncta fluunt, omnisque vagans formatur imago.
    • Nothing is permanent in all the world.
      All things are fluent; every image forms,
      Wandering through change.
      • Ovid, Metamorphoses (Transformations), Book XV, lines 177–178 (trans. R. Humphries)

P

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  • My merry, merry, merry roundelay
    Concludes with Cupid's curse,
    They that do change old love for new,
    Pray gods, they change for worse!
    • George Peele, Cupid's Curse; from The Arraignment of Paris. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Let us convert this night we are breathing together to a bright morning.
  • Till Peter's keys some christen'd Jove adorn,
    And Pan to Moses lends his Pagan horn.
  • See dying vegetables life sustain,
    See life dissolving vegetate again;
    All forms that perish other forms supply;
    (By turns we catch the vital breath and die).
  • Alas! in truth, the man but chang'd his mind,
    Perhaps was sick, in love, or had not dined.
  • Manners with Fortunes, Humours turn with Climes,
    Tenets with Books, and Principles with Times.

R

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Be at peace with the things you can't change. ~ Raye featuring 070 Shake
  • Tournoit les truies au foin.
    • Turned the pigs into the grass. (Clover).
    • François Rabelais, Gargantua (phrase meaning to change the subject). in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96

S

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It is to this law that our souls must adjust themselves, this they should follow, this they should obey. Whatever happens, assume that it was bound to happen, and do not be willing to rail at Nature. That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure, and to attend uncomplainingly upon the God under whose guidance everything progresses; for it is a bad soldier who grumbles when following his commander. ~ Seneca the Younger
As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay. ~ Sallust
  • In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
    • Carl Sagan (1987) Keynote address at CSICOP conference, as quoted in Do Science and the Bible Conflict? (2003) by Judson Poling, p. 30
  • True change is evolutionary, not revolutionary. It is futile for political systems to force human beings to cooperate or construct social bonding structures. People already do that, naturally; it is evident in our evolutionary history.
    • Quote in In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action by L.K. Samuels, Cobden Press, (2013) p. 348
  • Corporis et fortunæ bonorum ut initium finis est. Omnia orta occidunt, et orta senescunt.
    • As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay.
    • Sallust, Jugurtha, II. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • With every change his features play'd,
    As aspens show the light and shade.
  • As hope and fear alternate chase
    Our course through life's uncertain race.
  • When change itself can give no more,
    'Tis easy to be true.
    • Sir Charles Sedley, Reasons for Constancy. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis.
    • Translation: It is best to bear what cannot be changed.
    • Seneca, Moral Letters, 107. 9. As quoted in: Frank Breslin (Retired High-School Teacher) (December 21, 2017): Teaching Latin Quotations -- Part 1: The Art of Survival. In: The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on November 23, 2022.
    • Alternate translation: It is best to endure what you cannot change. Translated by Twitter user Melanie Antao in a tweet from July 3, 2012. Archived from the original on November 23, 2022.
  • This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
    That even our loves should with our fortunes change. -
  • That we would do,
    We should do when we would; for this "would" changes
    And hath abatements and delays as many
    As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
    And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,
    That hurts by easing.
  • The love of wicked men converts to fear;
    That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both
    To worthy danger and deserved death.
  • All things that we ordained festival,
    Turn from their office to black funeral;
    Our instruments to melancholy bells,
    Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast,
    Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
    Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
    And all things change them to the contrary.
  • Full fathom five thy father lies;
    Of his bones are coral made;
    Those are pearls that were his eyes:
    Nothing of him that doth fade,
    But doth suffer a sea-change
    Into something rich and strange.
  • Life may change, but it may fly not;
    Hope may vanish, but can die not;
    Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
    Love repulsed,—but it returneth.
    • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas, semi-chorus. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Men must reap the things they sow,
    Force from force must ever flow,
    Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
    That love or reason cannot change.
    • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, line 232. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Nought may endure but Mutability.
  • Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
    This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
    Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;
    This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
    • Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus, Act IV. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • We have an obligation to one another, responsibilities and trusts. That does not mean we must be pigeons, that we must be exploited. But it does mean that we should look out for one another when and as much as we can; and that we have a personal responsibility for our behavior; and that our behavior has consequences of a very real and profound nature. We are not powerless. We have tremendous potential for good or ill. How we choose to use that power is up to us; but first we must choose to use it. We're told every day, "You can't change the world." But the world is changing every day. Only question is...who's doing it? You or somebody else?
  • This sad vicissitude of things.
    • Laurence Sterne, Sermons, XVI. The Character of Shimel. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • The life of any one can by no means be changed after death; an evil life can in no wise be converted into a good life, or an infernal into an angelic life: because every spirit, from head to foot, is of the character of his love, and therefore, of his life; and to convert this life into its opposite, would be to destroy the spirit utterly.
    • Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 527. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96

T

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  • Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.
    • Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution.
    • Tacitus, Agricola, II. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range.
    Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.
  • Change is not merely necessary to life — it is life.
  • Is humanity ready for a transformation of consciousness, an inner flowering so radical and profound that compared to it the flowering of plants, no matter how beautiful, is only a pale reflection? Can human beings lose the density of their conditioned mind structures and become like crystals or precious stones, so to speak, transparent to the light of consciousness? Can they defy the gravitational pull of materialism and materiality and rise above identification with form that keeps the ego in place and condemns them to imprisonment within their own personality? p. 8
  • Most ancient religions and spiritual traditions share the common insight – that our “normal” state of mind is marred by a fundamental defect. However, out of this insight into the nature of the human condition – we may call it the bad news – arises a second insight: the good news of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness. In Hindu teachings (and sometimes in Buddhism also), this transformation is called enlightenment. In the teachings of Jesus, it is salvation, and in Buddhism, it is the end of suffering. Liberation and awakening are other terms used to describe this transformation.
  • The new spirituality, the transformation of consciousness, is arising to a large extent outside of the structures of the existing institutionalized religions. There were always pockets of spirituality even in mind dominated religions, although the institutionalized hierarchies felt threatened by them and often tried to suppress them.
    • Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)
  • Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness – also pointed to by the ancient teachers – was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not yet imperative. A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.
    • Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)
  • Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi.
    • If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.
    • Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Il Gattopardo (1958), The Leopard (trans. 1963) Page 29

W

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Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm. ~ H. G. Wells
Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges. ~ Margaret Wheatley
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~ Harold Wilson
  • So, when a raging fever burns,
    We shift from side to side by turns;
    And 'tis a poor relief we gain
    To change the place, but keep the pain.
    • Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II. 146. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • Change played in its new fashion with the world for twenty years. To most men the new things came little by little and day by day, remarkably enough, but not so abruptly as to overwhelm.
  • Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges.
  • He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
    • Harold Wilson, Speech to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France (January 23, 1967); reported in The New York Times (January 24, 1967), p. 12
  • Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought to be all captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start again. There would be fun in that. Some interest, — something to talk about.
    • Editorial in the New York Journal of Commerce (August 1845)
  • Life is arched with changing skies:
    Rarely are they what they seem:
    Children we of smiles and sighs—
    Much we know, but more we dream.
    • William Winter, Light and Shadow. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • There is, in the institutions of this country, one principle, which, had they no other excellence, would secure to them the preference over those of all other countries. I mean — and some devout patriots will start — I mean the principle of change.
    I have used a word to which is attached an obnoxious meaning. Speak of change, and the world is in alarm. And yet where do we not see change? What is there in the physical world but change? And what would there be in the moral world without change?
    • Frances Wright, Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182
  • In the moral world — that is, in the thoughts, and feelings, and inventions of men, change may certainly be either for the better or for the worse, or it may be for neither. Changes that are neither bad nor good can have regard only to trivial matters, and can be as little worthy of observation as of censure. Changes that are from better to worse can originate only in ignorance, and are ever amended so soon as experience has substantiated their mischief. Where men then are free to consult experience they will correct their practice, and make changes for the better. It follows, therefore, that the more free men are, the more changes they will make. In the beginning, possibly, for the worse; but most certainly in time for the better; until their knowledge enlarging by observation, and their judgment strengthening by exercise, they will find themselves in the straight, broad, fair road of improvement. Out of change, therefore, springs improvement; and the people who shall have imagined a peaceable mode of changing their institutions, hold a surety for their melioration. This surety is worth all other excellences. Better were the prospects of a people under the influence of the worst government who should hold the power of changing it, than those of a people under the best who should hold no such power.
    • Frances Wright, Independence Day speech at New Harmony (4 July 1828), sometimes noted as the first major public address by a woman to occur in the United States, as published in Course of Popular Lectures as Delivered by Frances Wright (1829) Address I, p. 171 - 182
  • "A jolly place," said he, "in times of old!
    But something ails it now; the spot is curst."
    • William Wordsworth, Hart-leap Well, Part II. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96
  • As high as we have mounted in delight
    In our dejection do we sink as low.
    • William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence, Stanza 4. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96

Y

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  • I heard the old, old men say,
    "Every thing alters,
    And one by one we drop away."
    They had hands like claws, and their knees
    Were twisted like the old thorn trees
    By the waters.
    I heard the old, old men say,
    "All that's beautiful drifts away
    Like the waters."
    • W. B. Yeats, The Old Men admiring themselves in the Water. in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 93-96

Z

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  • When the rate of change increases to the point that real time required to assimilate change exceeds the time in with change must be manifest, the enterprise is going to find itself in deep yohurt.
    • John Zachman (1994); reported in: Ronald G. Ross, Principles of the Business Rule Approach (2003), p. 35

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Caspar Huberinus: Postilla Deudsch, Frankfurt an der Oder 1554, fol. 354. Google
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