quotations about change
There is in all change something at once agreeable and infamous, something that smacks of infidelity and of moving day.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
My Heart Laid Bare
On every thing are traced decay and change.
Look! how the shifting seasons slip away.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
Resistless change, when powerless to improve,
Can only mar.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Perfectness"
Reflect frequently upon the instability of things, and how very fast the scenes of nature are shifted. Matter is in perpetual flux. Change is always and everywhere at work; it strikes through causes and effects, and leaves nothing fixed and permanent.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
Every change is a menace to stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
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"
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
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
The nature o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
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
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
Is any man afraid of change? Why what can take place without change?
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
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
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
You gotta run, this world is standin' still
You gotta believe, you can make it up that hill
You gotta know, you can have anything
You gotta be the best that you can be
But don't change for me.
GIN BLOSSOMS
"Don't Change for Me"
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
When you're down and out, there seems no hope at all
But if you just believe there's no way we can fall
Well, well, well, well let us realize
Oh, that a change can only come
When we stand together as one, yeah, yeah, yeah
MICHAEL JACKSON & LIONEL RICHIE
"We Are the World"
When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?