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
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
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
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
On every thing are traced decay and change.
Look! how the shifting seasons slip away.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
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
The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.
TONY BENN
interview with Michael Moore, Sicko
People do not change, they are merely revealed.
ANNE ENRIGHT
The Gathering
Every change is a menace to stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
All times are changing times, but ours is one of massive, rapid moral and mental transformation. Archetypes turn into millstones, large simplicities get complicated, chaos becomes elegant, and what everybody knows is true turns out to be what some people used to think.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
foreword, Tales from Earthsea
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
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
A man can always change things. That's what makes him different from the barnyard critters.
MA STONE
All That Money Can Buy
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
Change moves in spirals, not circles. For example, the sun goes up and then it goes down. But everytime that happens, what do you get? You get a new day. You get a new one. When you breathe, you inhale and you exhale. But every single time that you do that, you're a little bit different then the one before. We're always changing. And its important to know that there are some changes you can't control and that there are others you can.
DAN DUNNE
Half Nelson
People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.
LAWRENCE BLOCK
In the Midst of Death
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.
JAMES BALDWIN
Partisan Review, Fall 1956
You can't change the world
But you can change the facts
And when you change the facts
You change points of view
If you change points of view
You may change a vote
And when you change a vote
You may change the world
DEPECHE MODE
"New Dress"
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"
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