Quotes about change
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“If we don't change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

“She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

World, Beauty, Beauty

“I wonder when you stopped telling me everything Yuki. In ten years, that`s the only thing that has ever changed.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: Vampire Knight, Vol. 2

“We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.”

Joanne Harris book The Lollipop Shoes

Source: The Lollipop Shoes

Summer

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I'm sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Girl

“If you don't like it, change it, we said, to each other and to ourselves. And so we would change for the man, for another one. Change, we were sure, was for the better always. We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

“The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women, Dependency

“Change can be good. It just depends on what we make of it.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Summer in the City

Dependency

“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.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Changes
Song lyrics, Hunky Dory (1971)
Context: I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence.
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.

Children, World

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: Andy Warhol in His Own Words

People

“And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful… or if the fall had changed the story completely.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

Beauty, Princess

“They say that nameless things change constantly -that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn't quite real either.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

“No blame, no
reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you
understand, and you show that you understand, you can
love, and the situation will change.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

Love, Understanding

“This was the kind of dress that changed the world. The kind of dress that started religions.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

World, Religion

“Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Love, Truth

“some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be.”

Judy Blume Tiger Eyes

Source: Tiger Eyes

Truth, Way

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Clothes

“You can't change laws without first changing human nature.'
-Nurse Greta

You can't change human nature without first changing the law.'
-Nurse Yvonne”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Law, Nature

“Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock treeHas given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Dust of Snow http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173526" (1923) <br class="br">General sources

Way, Mood, Heart, Parting

“Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Time, Waiting

“And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Unaccustomed Earth

Source: Unaccustomed Earth

Forgiveness

“Change not only was inevitable, but usually brought its own rewards.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

“When his wife was at his side, she was also in front of him, marking out the horizon of his life. Now the horizon is empty: the view has changed.”

Milan Kundera book Encounter

Source: Encounter

Life

“Change is no loss, Will. Not always.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Loss, Depressing

“Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.”

Alice Hoffman book Practical Magic

Source: Practical Magic

Love, Women, Way

“So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

Hope, Revenge, Sea

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 281
Context: Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

Life

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Paris Review Interview (1986)
Context: You ask if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book — if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction.

“You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Past, Future

“Of course I can do this. I'm pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn't change my personality.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Ruthless Game

Personality

“Once you've chosen a man, don't try to change him', I wrote with more confidence. 'It can't be done. More important-don't let him try to change you.”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Confidence

“And don't change for a guy, ever," Leah added. "If they're worthy, they'll like you just the way you are.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Way, Guy

“What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

People

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“Silence, and then Eve said, "Okay, that was extra creepy, with whipped creepy topping. And this is me, changing my mind.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

Silence

“When she bleeds the smells I know change colour. There is iron in her soul on those days. She smells like a gun.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Soul

“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“In order to learn, one must change one's mind.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Learning

“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in The World's Best Thoughts on Life & Living (1981) compiled by Eugene Raudsepp; also quoted in The Michigan Daily http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/nov/11-10-98/arts/arts2.html (10 November 1998)

Life

“your life can change in an instant. that instant can last forever.”

Laura Kasischke (1961) American writer

Source: The Life Before Her Eyes

Life

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Life, Happiness, Happy

“Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

God, Health, Feeling, Learning

“If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character… Would you slow down? Or speed up?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Death, Speed

“It’s strange how things can change back as suddenly as they changed originally. When one thing happens and suddenly, things are back to normal.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“My world was changing, and I was not ready for it.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

World

“There we will, I pray, remain and learn and grow until the time when we will rise together to the ultimate heights, changing in appearance but never in devotion, sharing the transcendent glory of our love through all eternity.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Love, Learning, Appearance, Time

“I guess it's hard for people who are so used to things the way they are - even if they're bad - to change. 'Cause they kind of give up. And when they do, everybody kind of loses.”

Catherine Ryan Hyde (1955) American writer

Source: Pay It Forward

People, Way

“I swear, sometimes it feels like there's this monkey in my head who runs around turning the dials and changing channels on me. One minute I'm sitting around eating chocolate chip cookies and then all of a sudden I'm thinking about bears.”

Michael Thomas Ford (1968) American writer

Source: Suicide Notes

Feeling, Thinking

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change”

Isabel Allende book The House of the Spirits

Variant: Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change.
Source: The House of the Spirits

World, Fear, Reality

“They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 7: Time
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Time, Business

“Don't ever write anything you don't like yourself and if you do like it, don't take anyone's advice about changing it. They just don't know.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“I'm never going to get married."
"You're crazy." Buddy brightened. "You'll change your mind."
"No. My mind's made up.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"The Black Cottage" (1914)
1910s

Life, Truth, Thinking

“People don’t realize how easy life is to change. You just get on the bus.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Life, People

“I am grateful for the blessings of wealth, but it hasn't changed who I am. My feet are still on the ground. I'm just wearing better shoes.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Shoe, Wealth

“Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes.”

Christina Hoff Sommers (1950) American author and philosopher

Source: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women

Truth, Lie, Light

“Please, Percy… change your clothes. You smell like you've been run over by an electric horse.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Horse, Clothes

“If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Variant translation: If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.
VI, 21
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VI

Truth, Home, Search, Thinking

“They don't realise that they've changed; they think it's the world that changed.”

Ryū Murakami book Coin Locker Babies

Source: Coin Locker Babies

World, Thinking

“If you never take a risk, you will never
know what changes you need to make.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.”

Bell Hooks book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

(1984)
Source: Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center

“Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there and all ours for the taking." -- Cecilia to Henry Chinaski, liberty taken changing past tense to present tense (173)”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

World, Beauty, Past

“It doesn't matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Way

“For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

“Calvin: Know what I pray for?
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

28 Aug 92
The Days Are Just Packed
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

“She thought of how much people changed you. It was the opposite of what you always heard, that no one could change a person. It wasn't true. It was only through other people that one ever did change.”

Susan Minot (1956) American author and screenwriter

Source: Evening

People, Personality

“Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”

Gilda Radner (1946–1989) American comedian

Life

“We must accept our pain
Change what we can
and laugh at the rest”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Pain

“Long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings… but short words were slippery, unpredictable, changing their meanings without any pattern.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“Everything passes,
Everything changes,
Just do what you think you should do.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Thinking

“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

World, Time

“You're better equipped for this world than I am," she said. "I'm always trying to change the world. You know how to live in it.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

World

“We can't think of changing our skin color. Change the world - that's how we gotta think.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

World, Color, Thinking

“I am not going to change who I am. I am human and I know how to love, and be kind, and be compassionate to those who are weaker than me. Just because I have power doesn't mean I have to use it!”

Garth Nix book Superior Saturday

Source: Superior Saturday

Love

“Love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, love me, I'll be anybody you want me to be. Use me. Change me. I can be thin with big breasts and big hair. Take me apart. Make me into anything, but just love me.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love

“Calvin: History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
p152”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

Life, History

“Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

World, Personality

“You can't go back, Ever. You can't change the past. It just is." I squint, having no idea what she's talking about. But just as I start to ask, she shakes her head and says, "This is our destiny. Not yours.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Idea, Past

“Change your thoughts and you can change the world.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

As quoted in Back on Track : How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve (1997) by Deborah Norville, p. 201
Variant: Change your thoughts and you change your world.

World, Motivational, Wise, Success

“Coyote never loses. Because I change the rules of the games my enemies play. What are the rules of your game?”

Patricia Briggs book Frost Burned

Source: Frost Burned

Game

“Try to find pleasure in the speed that you're not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allows a new person to grow inside of you. But when all is said and done, you're the one who must decide how you handle it.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Pleasure, Way, Personality, Speed

“There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.”

Euripidés Iphigenia in Tauris

Iphigenia in Tauris (c. 412 BC) l. 721

Happiness, Chance

“What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

World, Way

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Fools, Way, Thinking

“If you resist change, you resist life.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Life

“To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Source: The Night Country

“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Time

“After all, the wrong is done. It is past and cannot be changed. We have only the present and the future upon which to move forward.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Source: Loving Each Other

Past, Future

“If you had hope, maybe you could find a way to make things change,. Because if you thought about it, there were so many reasons to try.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Hope, Way

“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Prologue (p. 5)
Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999)
Context: “Heed the lesson there, son.”
“What lesson?”
“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.”
“I want to be a soldier. A hero.”
“You’ll grow out of it.”

Life, God, World, Boy