Quotes about change
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“The subtle and deadly change of heart that might occur in you would be involved with the realization that a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

People, Heart

“Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Dead

“The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in a single, solitary, even humble individual. For it is within the soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Soul, History, Evil, Heart

“It's not easy being so frightened of everything. And when I think of how much I've improved in the last year, I wonder when I'll ever get finished with making changes and be really grown up.”

Paula Danziger book There's a Bat in Bunk Five

Source: There's a Bat in Bunk Five

Thinking

“And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing… this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea…”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Imagination, Tea

“Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

"What is Civilization?" Ladies' Home Journal, LXIII (January, 1946).

“people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

People, World, Thinking, Sense

“People can cry much easier than they can change.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

People, Cry

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"A First Word" A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

Happiness, Way, Past

“The key to friendship with God, he said, is not changing what you do, but changing your attitude toward what you do.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

God, Friendship

“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior… you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

People, Behavior, Communication

“Either things grow and change or they die.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”

Kiran Desai book The Inheritance of Loss

Source: The Inheritance of Loss

Past

“In reality, you don’t ever change the hurricane. You just learn how to stay out of its path.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Source: House Rules

Reality, Learning

“The past was gone. Nothing could change what had already been. Looking back at it, letting its wounds fester, indulging in regret was just a different, slower way to die. The living moved forward.”

Jim Butcher Captain's Fury

Source: Captain's Fury

Way, Past

“It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“I'm sure that whatever changed is only temporary. It will change again.”

Sidney Sheldon book The Sands of Time

Source: The Sands of Time

“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,…”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Faith

“It doesn’t take time to change once you understand the problem… Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn’t take long to drop it, does it?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Understanding, Problem, Time

“If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives…”

Franz Kafka book The Great Wall of China

Source: The Great Wall of China

Soul, History, Sense

“Accept what you can not change-change that which is unacceptable.”

Jennifer Fallon (1959) author

Source: Warlord

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist

Thinking

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Love

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

God, Nature, Faith

“The release of atomic power has changed everything except our way of thinking… the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. (1945)”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Way, Problem, Thinking, Heart

“They say that nameless things change constantly—that names fix them in place like pins.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

“We 're all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren 't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all" - Lucretia Mott in The Invention of Wings
― Sue Monk Kidd”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

Source: The Invention of Wings

God

“It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory, but when you succeed, you start to realize that you’re capable of far more than you imagined. You live in this vast body called the Universe, which contains all the solutions and all the problems. Visit your soul; don’t visit your past. The Universe goes through many mutations and carries the past with it. We call each of those mutations a ‘life,’ but just as the cells in your body change and yet you remain the same, so time does not pass, it merely changes.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life, Soul, Imagination, Problem

“Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?”

Richard Yates (1926–1992) Novelist, short story writer

God

“How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air.”

Daniel H. Wilson book Robopocalypse

Source: Robopocalypse

Life, People, Personality

“The front door shut, leaving Alec sitting in the half-lit garden, alone. He closed his eyes for a moment, the image of a face hovering behind his lids. Not Jace's face, for a change. The eyes set in the face were green, slit-pupiled. Cat eyes.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Cats

“Everything alters me, but nothing changes me.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“But you've changed,' I whisper. 'Haven't you?'
It is the scorpian's nature to sting. Just because he has no opportunity doesn't mean that he cannot.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Nature

“Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and turn headlong down an immutable course.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

The Silent World by Capt. Jacques-Yves Cousteau with Frederic Dumas 2004 National Geographic Society, pg. 5

“But like everything else, love changed.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Love

“You've changed," he said. "You're-uh-"
"Yes?"
"Taller."
"I hope so. I was ten the last time you saw me."
"And your hair's really dark now-and short," he added.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: Don't Tell

Hope, Time

“It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Life, Sad

“Everyone has a past, but that's just it--it's in the past. You can learn from it, but you can't change it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Learning, Past

“Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

When asked how the world had changed following the September 11, 2001 attacks Has the world changed? http://books.guardian.co.uk/writersreflections/story/0,1367,567546,00.html, The Guardian (October 11, 2001)

People, Faith, Religion, Confidence

“I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Prep

Source: Prep

Life

“The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Past

“You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time, but that doesn’t matter. The world has been changed nonetheless.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Source: Levels of Life

People, World, Time

“You think I'm deranged! How refreshing. Everyone here takes me so seriously, it's a wonderful change to be thought mentally deficient.”

Katie MacAlister (1964) Author

Source: Sex, Lies and Vampires

Thinking

“In order for this to happen, your entire frame of reference will have to change, and you will be forced to surrender many things that you now scarcely know you have.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

Source: The Fire Next Time

“We are all flawed, my dear. Every one of us. And believe me, we've all made mistakes. You've just got to take a good hard look at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move one, pet.”

Lauren Myracle book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

“But a risk-free life wasn't much of a life, really, and if she was going to change, she might as well start now.”

Nicholas Sparks book True Believer

Source: True Believer

Life

“People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

People

“The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Men, War

“Sometimes, if you want to change a man's mind, you have to change the mind of the man next to him first.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

“The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

History, Passion

“I knew right then and there nothing was ever going to change. It wouldn't matter if I was tall or short or fat or thin or absent every day. I was a loser from birth.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Birth

“Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Careful Use of Compliments

Source: The Careful Use of Compliments

Time, Heart

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

World, Question

“The only thing that never changes is that everything changes.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman

“They weren't lying. They firmly believed it all. Which doesn't change the facts.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Lying

“People don't change. There are two kinds of people in the world: winners and losers. Black and white. I don't know where gray fits in, or if you can even live in that shade.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

People, World

“You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Source: T is for Trespass

Baby

“You've maddened me for you… have changed everything. So, I'm going to f*ck you long and hard, beauty, because if I'm to be enslaved by you-I want to be your master as well.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Beauty

“Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Sweet Thursday (1954)

Men, Grass

“The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Hope, Time, Past, Future

“To change one’s life:
1. Start immediately.
2. Do it flamboyantly.
3. No exceptions.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Life

“Rafe didn't just flirt-he charmed girls right up to the point where they fell for him, then he changed his mind. I called him a player with attention deficit disorder.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Girl

“If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”

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

Life, Way, Thinking

“What's important is that a story changes every time you say it out loud. When you put it on paper, it can never change. But the more times you tell it, the more changes will occur. A story is a living thing; it moves and shifts”

Pat Conroy South of Broad

Source: South of Broad

Time

“It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Love, Appearance

“here, here is my dark world. you carry it for a change. im out”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

World

“I don't want to change anything, because I don't know how to deal with change.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

“Try to realize it's all within yourself,
No one else can make you change.
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows in within you and without you.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

Within You Without You, from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Lyrics

Life

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Winter, Summer, Country

“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something's lost--something's left behind. You can't ever quite repeat anything, and I've been so yours, here”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change. I guess that means I've grown up now…”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Variant: I've screwed everything up royally. I remember you saying that growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change.
Source: City of Ashes

“The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Beauty, Light, Waiting

“Donʹt worry now about what you canʹt change. Rest when you can so youʹll be ready for tomorrowʹs battles”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”

Rosemary Sutcliff (1920–1992) English author

Thinking, Parting

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: An Autobiography

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Disease

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Soul

“I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Life, Happiness

“If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

People, Hope

“Change is a funny thing. We never are quite sure what we are becoming or even why. Then one day we look at ourselves and wonder who we are and how we got that way. Only one thing about change remains constant… it is always painful”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Pain, Way

“If voting changed anything, it would be made illegal”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

Variants: "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." "If voting changed anything it would be illegal." "If voting made a difference it would be illegal." "If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it." - also incorrectly attributed to American humorist Mark Twain or American peace activist Philip Berrigan.. Although often attributed to Goldman, there is no evidence that she made this statement. The earliest known example of this quote is from a 1976 newspaper opinion piece: "If voting could change anything, it would be made illegal". Disputed Source: Snopes.com - Election Dissection http://www.snopes.com/mark-twain-voting-quote/ Source: Borden, Robert S., "Voting is Dishonest and Fraudulent" https://www.newspapers.com/clip/5211342/if_voting_could_change_anything_it/, The Sun (Lowell, Massachusetts), 1976-09-24, p. 7

“Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?”

Amy Tan The Hundred Secret Senses

Variant: Everyone must dream. We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming — well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate. Isn’t that true?
Source: The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)

Fate, Dreams, Hope