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. We chased our pleasures here, Dug our treasures there, But can you still recall The time we cried? Break on through to the other side.

42. Cool pools from a tired land sink now in the peace of evening Clouds weaken and die. The sun, an orange skull, whispers quietly, becomes an island, & is gone. There they are watching us everything will be dark. The light changed. We were aware knee-deep in the fluttering air as the ships move on trains in their wake.

43. I think there's a certain moment when you're right in time with your audience and then you both grow out of it, and you just have to realize that it's not that you have outgrown the audience, it's just that the audience and you both are too old for that. That has to go on something else, and let the younger people do that.

44. I cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of great extra-social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the machine. They may be idealists and desire to make a new world, or they may simply be artists, loving for its own sake the pursuit of truth. If I were to hazard a guess, I should say that it took both types to bring about results, for the second find the knowledge and the first the will to use it.

45. A great storm destroys much that is precious, but it may also clear the air and blow down trees which might have been obscuring the view and making our life stuffy, and reveal in our estate possibilities of development that we had not thought of.

46. One must become Fanatic - be a wedge - a thunder-bolt To smite a passage through the close-grained world.

47. We want to take back America, and together we will.

48. So goth the world, now wo, now wel.

49. You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world... But when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out.

50. You say you want a Revolution; you better get it on right away.

51. Summers simply won't be the same without him.

52. Something I was not aware had happened suddenly turned out not to have happened.

53. Peor and Baalim Forsake their temples dim.

54. At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.

55. Everything is flowing- going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks... While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood...in Nature's warm heart.

56. Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.

57. If you think about all the gains our society has made, from independence to now, it wasn't government. It was activism. People think, 'Oh, Teddy Roosevelt established Yosemite National Park, what a great president.' BS. It was John Muir who invited Roosevelt out and then convinced him to ditch his security and go camping. It was Muir, an activist, a single person.

58. Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.

59. There is absolutely no reason why we have to deal with the mid-life crisis of our social policies by putting a bullet through their heads.

60. Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human beings to change their basic assumptions is usually contained in a few phrases. Poets may not be 'the unacknowledged legislators of the world'; but Ruskin, like Rousseau, changed the world by a vision which has the intensity and innocence of poetry.

61. I suppose everything about one's self is recontextualised in an alien environment.

62. The evolvers are people who cause things to change. The maintainers of the status quo do everything to keep things from changing. And, there I see differences of perception. Differences in vision. Differences in interpretation, and differences in temperament, in personality. The number of evolvers are much fewer than the maintainers of the status quo. And amongst the evolvers, there are some who are initiators, some who go along with what other people recognize to be new or different.

63. We shall be quiet and wait till a star falls from heaven. Can you see, how above one light appears after the other and they together form a dome! We sit in silence and fold our hands in prayer. We shall be quiet and wait until a star falls from heaven.

64. Apparently, father was a Georgian when he was younger.

65. The Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it (Engraved upon his tomb)

66. In war the result is never final.

67. All the colours look brighter now. Everything they say seems to sound new. Slipping into tomorrow too quick, Yesterday always too good to forget. Stop the swing of the pendulum! Let us through!

68. This kicking here inside Makes me leave you behind. No more under the quilt To keep you warm. Your sister I was born. You must lose me like an arrow, Shot into the killer storm.

69. Emma's come down. She's stopped the light Shining out of her eyes.

70. She sent him scented letters, And he received them with a strange delight. Just like his wife But how she was before the tears, And how she was before the years flew by, And how she was when she was beautiful.

71. We've lost our chance. We're the first and the last, ooh, After the blast.

72. Mother, where are the angels? I'm scared of the changes.

73. My door was never locked, Until one day a trigger come cocking. (But now I've started learning how,) I keep it shut.

74. 'Coming in with the golden light In the morning. Coming in with the golden light Is the New Man.

75. With a kiss I'd pass the key And feel your tongue Teasing and receiving. With your spit Still on my lip, You hit the water.

76. I will not let you in. I face towards the wind. I change into the Mule.

77. It's in the trees! It's coming!

78. This cloud, this cloud - Says 'Noah, C'mon and build me an Ark.' And if you're coming, jump, 'Cause We're leaving with the Big Sky.

79. Never, never say goodbye To my part of your life.

80. I was there at the birth, Out of the cloudburst, The head of the tempest. Murderer! Murder of calm...

81. Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world. And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech...

82. See those trees Bend in the wind I feel they've got a lot more sense than me You see I try to resist...

83. Who said anything about it hurting? It's gonna be beautiful It's gonna be wonderful It's gonna be paradise.

84. Without the pain there'd be no learning Without the hurting we'd never change.

85. Let's change things. Let's danger it up. We're crazy enough. I just can't take it.

86. Oh the dawn has come And the song must be sung And the flowers are melting. What kind of language is this?

87. We've been holding our breath for a long time. Three years of playing the old songs and wondering 'whatever next?' Would it be even weirder than The Dreaming? Would it leave more admirers by the wayside, shaking their heads?... The real fans will happily go along for the ride, even if she isn't going the pretty way.

88. You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.

89. Modern science is no longer denying spirit. And that, that is epochal. As Hans Kung remarked, the standard answer to 'Do you believe in Spirit?' used to be, 'Of course not, I'm a scientist,' but it might very soon become, 'Of course I believe in Spirit. I'm a scientist.'

90. It's not the career politicians that I care about. I want to get them out just like Arnold did in California, and, after that, we'll get the Californians out of Texas.

91. 'Things don't stay the way they are,' said Finnerty. 'It's too entertaining to try to change them.'

92. You know what gets me? ... How everybody says 'fuck' and 'shit' all the time. I used to be scared shitless I'd say 'fuck' or 'shit' in public, by accident. Now everybody says 'fuck' and 'shit', 'fuck' and 'shit' all the time. Something very big must have happened while we were out of the country.

93. Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

94. Think of it as evolution in action.

95. The medical revolution that began with the beginning of the twentieth century had warped all human society for five hundred years. America had adjusted to Eli Whitney's cotton gin in less than half that time. As with the gin, the effects would never quite die out. But already society was swinging back to what had once been normal. Slowly; but there was motion. In Brazil a small but growing, alliance agitated for the removal of the death penalty for habitual traffic offenders. They would be opposed, but they would win.

96. 'One thing I am very glad of is that I went through the sixties. People who didn't really don't know what they missed. We pushed a certain consciousness, a way of life and it was exciting - no AIDS, people weren't dying so much from drug abuse and it was truly a time of freedom and change.'

97. I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

98. The West is the fitting tomb for all the sorrow and the sighing, all the errors and the follies of the Past: for all its withered Hopes and all its buried Loves! From the East comes new strength, new ambition, new Hope, new Life, new Love! Look Eastward! Aye, look Eastward!'

99. If we are to prevent megatechnics from further controlling and deforming every aspect of human culture, we shall be able to do so only with the aid of a radically different model derived directly, not from machines, but from living organisms and organic complexes (ecosystems). What can be known about life only through the process of living - and so is part of even the humbles organisms - must be added to all the other aspects that can be observed, abstracted, measured. ... Once an organic world picture is in the ascendant, the working aim of an economy of plenitude will be not to feed more human functions into the machine, but to develop further man's incalculable potentialities for self-actualization and self-transendence, taking back into himself deliberately many of the activities he has too supinely surrendered into the mechanical system.

100. Do you pine for the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?