Selected change quotes

1. The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

2. Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

3. I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.

4. Autumn to winter, winter into spring, Spring into summer, summer into fall, - So rolls the changing year, and so we change; Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

5. I have become my own version of an optimist. If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.

6. Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day.

7. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

8. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

9. Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but 'vector' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.

10. The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

11. There, like the wind through woods in riot, Through him the gale of life blew high; The tree of man was never quiet: Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

12. A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.

13. Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape Who dost in every country change thy shape!

14. What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

15. I begin with the young. We older ones are used up but my magnificent youngsters! Are there finer ones anywhere in the world? Look at all these men and boys! What material! With you and I, we can make a new world.

16. Politics is history in the making.

17. One man's constant is another man's variable.

18. Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

19. You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

20. Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

21. We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.

22. Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.

23. Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually unrecognizable in the final story.

24. That's something I think is growing on me as I get older: happy endings.

25. I turned vegetarian after 9/11. A friend of mine came back from New York and said that he couldn't stand the smell of burnt flesh. It immediately reminded me of a barbecue.

26. One man with courage makes a majority.

27. You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.

28. During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

29. So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

30. People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.

31. Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.

32. A brave world, sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days.

33. Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

34. Change in all things is sweet.

35. Thought may well be ever ranging, And opinion ever changing, Task-work be, though ill begun, Dealt with by experience better; By the law and by the letter Duty done is duty done Do it, Time is on the wing!

36. O tell me, friends, while yet we part, And heart can yet be heard of heart, O tell me then, for what is it Our early plan of life we quit; From all our old intentions range, And why does all so wholly change? O tell me, friends, while yet we part!

37. My wind is turned to bitter north, That was so soft a south before; My sky, that shone so sunny bright, With foggy gloom is clouded o'er My gay green leaves are yellow-black, Upon the dank autumnal floor; For love, departed once, comes back No more again, no more.

38. As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail, at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.

39. An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

40. I try to take life as it comes, and just hope it keeps coming.

41. I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that 'it happened' - anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense 'the processes of evolution are really fundamental, and should probably be at least _thought_ about in pretty much any context').

42. Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below. Now my brothers call from the bay; Now the great winds shoreward blow; Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us away. This way, this way!

43. Saw it written and i saw it say Pink moon is on its way And none of you stand so tall Pink moon's gonna get ye all.

44. Is it some law of human nature that you inevitably become whatever your first commander was? I can quit right now, if that's so.

45. Maybe music will save the world.

46. Just slip out the back, Jack, make a new plan, Stan Don't need to be coy, Roy, just listen to me Hop on the bus, Gus, don't need to discuss much Just drop off the key, Lee, and get yourself free.

47. Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

48. First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. 'Give me a place to stand,' said Archimedes, 'and I will move the world.' These men moved the world, and so can we all.

49. A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person's life.[2]

50. The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Whose beard with age is hoar, Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest Turned from the bridegroom's door. He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.

51. There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever - money, for instance, or war.

52. History says don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

53. The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological - technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.

54. Failure is impossible.

55. The trouble is that things never get better, they just stay the same, only more so.

56. In time the savage bull sustains the yoke, In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure, In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak, In time the flint is pierced with softest shower.

57. We gotta make a change. It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we gotta do, to survive.

58. The partaker partakes of that which changes him. The child that touches takes character from the thing, The body, it touches. The captain and his men Are one and the sailor and the sea are one.

59. The way I see it, my park will never be finished. It's something I can keep developing and adding to. A movie is different. Once I've wrapped it up and have turned it over to Technicolor to be processed, I'm through with it. As far as I'm concerned the picture I've finished a few weeks ago is done. There may be things I don't like, but if there are I can't do anything about them. I've always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. I've got that in Disneyland, even the trees will grow and be more beautiful every year.

60. He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he would have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, maybe even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.

61. In New Mexico he always awoke a young man...Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up to him for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests... That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!

62. The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head And became a Tyrant in his stead.

63. Many ingenious lovely things are gone That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude, protected from the circle of the moon That pitches common things about.

64. Weep not that the world changes-did it keep A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

65. A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.

66. You are WHAT you are, You are WHERE you are, because of what you put in your mind. You can CHANGE what you are, You can CHANGE where you are, by changing what you put in your mind.

67. Nothing is going to change in the Congo until you and I figure out what is wrong with the person in the mirror.

68. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? - Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. - It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

69. You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety

70. To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium. page 27, Buccaneer Books edition (1990) ISBN 0899667481 172 pages total

71. I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous - from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society which rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, that measure up to their standards of freedom, of humaneness, and of rational criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority,and their readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable suffering, and to work for its avoidance. This revolution has created powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered.

72. Something has to make you run I don't know why I didn't come

73. Then [she] wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again

74. Now I will never let go of you in my heart, Josif thought. I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right

75. Once you duct-tape a Ziploc bag to a man's chest, there's no going back. -Treasure Box

76. When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders. ~ 37

77. Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim

78. Among the fundamental likeness between the Revolutionary Republicans and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate; that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general enslavement. Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities, endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African slavery itself. Though largely unsuccessful, it is to the measure of success they did achieve that we are indebted for such liberties as we do retain, and not to the general government.

79. Dame Fortune is a fickle gipsy, And always blind, and often tipsy; Sometimes for years and years together, She 'll bless you with the sunniest weather, Bestowing honour, pudding, pence, You can't imagine why or whence;- Then in a moment-Presto, pass!- Your joys are withered like the grass;

80. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

81. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.

82. If I could get that girl to publish her poetry, the world would change. (On Courtney Love) (1993)

83. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

84. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.

85. If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

86. What he feared most was the blind spot between us and the future, the space between identities where we could get lost forever.

87. That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

88. Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each one of us individually.

89. The old Old winds that blew When chaos was, what do They tell the clattered trees that I Should weep?

90. Caminante, no hay camino / Se hace camino al andar. = Walker, there is no path. The path is made by walking.

91. On the eventual death of racism: 'What ever truth drops on it eventually grinds to a powder.'

92. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are 'flawless.' Most of us are in that category. But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us - from this total examination of the 'unchangeable' environment - comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.

93. If you are the big tree, we are the small axe, ready to cut you down.

94. Then I got Mary pregnant and man that was all she wrote. And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat. We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest. No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, No flowers, no wedding dress. That night we went down to the river and into the river we'd dive, Oh down to the river we did ride.

95. I watch the ripples change their size But never leave the stream Of warm impermanence and So the days float through my eyes But still the days seem the same. And these children that you spit on As they try to change their worlds Are immune to your consultations They're quite aware of what they're going through.

96. I've found that every time I've made a radical change, it's helped me feel buoyant as an artist.

97. somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence. in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose nothing that we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

98. 'Yes,' I answered you last night; 'No,' this morning, Sir, I say. Colours seen by candlelight, Will not look the same by day.

99. I began to realize that life is a growth stage I'm going through.

100. We outgrow love, like other things And put it in the Drawer - Till it an Antique fashion shows - Like Costumes Grandsires wore.