Quotes about change

A collection of quotes on the topic of change.

„In the name of Indian national life, in the name of religion, I appeal to all in each of the two countries who hold position…let them begin each in their own community to work untiringly towards this end: boldly to repudiate feelings of hatred and intolerance, actively to condemn and suppress acts of violence and aggression, earnestly to strive to exorcise suspicions…I appeal in the name of national life because communal tension is eating into it as a canker…I appeal in the name of religion because I can appeal to nothing nobler, and because religion is the language of the soul, and it is a change of soul that India needs today.“

— Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax British politician 1881 - 1959

Speech as Viceroy of India (1926), quoted in Birkenhead, Halifax (Hamish Hamilton, 1965), pp. 223-234
Viceroy of India

Country, Communication, Soul, Feeling

„Waiting to die in old age will not benefit anyone if you have wasted your youth and do not want to change anything right now.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Age, Youth, Waiting

„If there's a hell, I think it's an encyclopedia, and you can just look up what everyone in your life thought about you. And if there is a heaven, it's a wikipedia, and you can just change that.“

— John Mulaney American actor and comedian 1982

Life, Thinking, Hell

„We are the change we have been waiting for.“

— Barack Obama 44th President of the United States of America 1961

Waiting

„Memory works like a Wikipedia page: You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.“

— Elizabeth Loftus American cognitive psychologist 1944

How reliable is your memory? https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_loftus_the_fiction_of_memory?language=en#t-320055 June 2013

People, Memory

„By eating meat we share the responsibility of climate change, the destruction of our forests, and the poisoning of our air and water. The simple act of becoming a vegetarian will make a difference in the health of our planet.“

— Thich Nhat Hanh Religious leader and peace activist 1926

Source: The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

Water, Health

„If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.“

— Jiddu Krishnamurti Indian spiritual philosopher 1895 - 1986

Understanding

„The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.“

— T.S. Eliot 20th century English author 1888 - 1965

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Evil, World

„I had just come to accept that my life would be ordinary when extraordinary things began to happen. The first of those came as a terrible shock and, like anything else that changes you forever, split my life into halves: Before and After.“

— Ransom Riggs, book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Prologue, Page 8
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)

Life

„Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.“

— Stephen Hawking British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942 - 2018

Back To Work, Motivational, Intelligence

„When climate change is running faster than we are, everything must be done to defeat climate change.“

— António Guterres Secretary-General of the United Nations 1949

Said in a visit to Nigeria in 2019. Recorded in an Instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzxt5h-nYhT/ on UN Environment

„The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.“

— David Attenborough British broadcaster and naturalist 1926

Dependency, Water, Nature, Food

„Changing from the defensive to the offensive, is one of the most delicate operations in war.“

— Napoleon I of France French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French 1769 - 1821

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

War

„It is not great men who change the world, but weak men in the hands of a great God.“

— Brother Yun Chinese christian house church leader 1958

Source: The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun

World, God, Men

„Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.“

— Haruki Murakami, book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Dance, Sun, Time, Sense

„I think my government are fascists. I feel that if we don't change from a society that worships money and power over to one that worships compassion and generosity, there is no hope for human survival this century.“

— Patch Adams Physician, activist, diplomat, author 1945

As quoted in "Entrevista com o médico americano P. Adams" in Roda Viva - Entrevista (13 November 2007)

Thinking, Feeling, Hope, Money

„Somewhere inside all of us is the power to change the world.“

— Roald Dahl British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter 1916 - 1990

World

„It was one thing, after all, to know his feelings for Amanda hadn't changed; it was another thing entirely to face the future with the certainty that they never would.“

— Nicholas Sparks, book The Best of Me

Source: The Best of Me

Future, Feeling

„How can we affect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?“

— Emma Watson British actress and model 1990

"Emma Watson HeForShe Speech at the United Nations | UN Women 2014" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Dg226G2Z8,
UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign (2014)

Feeling, World

„It is inevitable that the mind which does not have a place to turn to or any stable base will undergo change from hour to hour and from minute to minute due to the variety of its distractions, and by the things that come to it from outside it will be continually transformed into whatever occurs to it at any given moment.“

— John Cassian Christian monk and theologian 360 - 435

The Conferences V.2 ( online http://books.google.com/books?id=k3CrvJJZkqEC&pg=PA44)