Quotes about change
page 34

“Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 383

Art

“And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

War, People, Faith, Hope

“I hold that the first form of a body is the first corporeal mover. But this is light, which as it multiplies itself and expands without the body of matter moving with it, makes its passage instantaneously through the transparent medium and is not motion but a state of change. But, indeed, when light is expanding itself in different directions it is incorporated with matter, if the body of matter extends with it, and it makes a rarefaction or augmentation of matter; for when light is itself charged with the body of matter, it produces condensation or rarefaction. So when light generates itself in one direction drawing matter with it, it produces local motion; and when light within matter is sent out and what is outside is sent in, it produces qualitative change. From this it is clear that corporeal motion is a multiplicative power of light, and this is a corporeal and natural appetite.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

see De Luce Tr. Ludwig Baur (1912) pp. 51-52
De Luce seu de Inchoatione Formarum (c. 1215-1220)

Nature, Light, Drawing

“But that has changed when a few months later during a lull in the battle of the attack on Verdun, he was telling his comrade a dirty anecdote. To his amazement, his buddy did not laugh: “Kutscher, didn’t you find that one funny?” The reaction of poor fellow to joke was no longer a laughing matter: a shrapnel of an enemy grenade struck him right into the heart - he collapsed dead to the ground. "I still see myself on the edge of the trench. A bright light, brighter than the atomic bomb struck me: he is now standing before holy God! And the next thought was: if we had sat in different arrangement, then the splinter grenade would have hit me instead, and then I would be standing face-to-face before God right now! My friend was laying dead in front of my eyes. For the first time in many years, I folded my hands and uttered a prayer, which consisted of only one sentence: "Dear God, I beg You, do not let me fall before I'll be sure not go to hell!"" A few days later, he then entered with a New Testament in the hand a broken French farmhouse, fell to his knees and prayed: Jesus! The Bible says that you have come from God in order to save sinners. I am a sinner. I cannot promise anything in the future, because I have a bad character. But I do not want to go to hell, if I get a shot. And so, Lord Jesus, I surrender myself to you from head to foot. Do with me whatever you want!"”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Since there was no bang, no big movement, I just went out. I had found the Lord, a gentleman to whom I belonged."
Jesus Our Destiny
Source: [ВИЛЬГЕЛЬМ (Wilhelm), БУШ (Busch), Приди домой (Come home), CLV, Christliche Literatur -Verbreitung, Bielefeld, 8, 158, 1995, http://www.manna.lv/nopirkt/Pridi-domoj/389397721X.html, Russian, 3-89397-721-X, 2011-11-19]

God, Hell, Light, Time

“One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change of my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was "say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 48–49 1810s

Life, Men, God, World

“About 70 years ago, only a small number of “elementary particles”, thought to be the basic building blocks of matter, were known: the proton, the electron, and the photon as the quantum of radiation. All these particles are stable (the neutron is stable only in nuclear matter, the free neutron decays by beta decay: n→p+e−+\overline{\nu}). Owing to the availability of large accelerators, this picture of a few elementary particles has profoundly changed: today, the standard reference Review of Particle Properties lists more than 100 particles. The number is still growing as the energies and luminosities of accelerators are increased.”

Walter Greiner (1935–2016) German physicist

Source: Quantum Chromatodynamics (3rd ed., 2007), Ch. 1 : The Introduction of Quarks

“Nothing is made,
Nothing disappears.

The same changes,
At the same places,
Never stopping.

The foundation and the roof
With the world between
Dreaming.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

"Hush," p. 61
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Big Chamber”

World, Dreams

“In this country, Fox News has gotten a big, big audience that appreciates its independence. There's passion there, and it's pushed. … It has taken a long boot time, but it has now changed CNN because it has challenged them — they've become more centrist in their choice of stories. They're trying to become, using our phrase, more fair and balanced.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

citation needed

Passion, Time, Country

“[As a vegan] I feel better, I look better, so it’s a big change for me. You have more clarity and I think that all of us want to be more clear. I wanted to look younger and feel better and wanted to be a greater contributor to the good on the planet […] The more I learned about factory farming… the more I realized that I could not, in good conscience, be a contributor to such violence.”

Russell Simmons (1957) American entrepreneur, producer and author

In 2008 to CNN. Quoted in "Russell Simmons Becomes a Stamp", in SoJones.com (1 December 2011) http://sojones.com/news/105789-russell-simmons-becomes-a-stamp/.

Feeling, Thinking, Learning

“Over the last 50,000 years, modern humans have been subjected to enormous evolutionary pressures, in part from the consequences of their own social culture. They explored new ranges and climates and developed new social structures. Fast adaption, particularly to new social structures, was required as each population strove to exploit its own ecological niche and to avoid conquest by its neighbors. The genetic mechanism that made possible this rapid evolutionary change was the soft sweep, the reshaping of existing traits by quick minor adjustments in the sets of alleles that controlled them. But what began as a single experiment with the ancestral human population became a set of parallel experiments once the ancestral population had spread throughout the world. These independent evolutionary paths led inevitably to the different human populations or races that inhabit each continent.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

World, Parting

“Even now, not a day goes by when I don't wish I could turn back the clock and change what happened.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Denise Holton, Chapter 15, p. 166
2000s, The Rescue (2000)

“Through the vote, you'll change nothing in this country. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We'll only get change, unfortunately, when we go into a civil war here someday and do a work the military regime didn't do, killing as much as thirty thousand people, starting with FHC. It's all right if some innocent people die. Innocent people die in many wars.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Referring to the then-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) at the program Câmera Aberta at Band on 23 May 1999. O dia que Bolsonaro quis matar FHC, sonegar impostos e declarar guerra civil http://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/politica/republica/o-dia-que-bolsonaro-quis-matar-fhc-sonegar-impostos-e-declarar-guerra-civil-8mtm0u0so6pk88kqnqo0n1l69. Gazeta do Povo (10 October 2017).

War, People, Country

“Incredibly, at this critical juncture in financial history, after which so much changed so quickly, the only constraint in the subprime mortgage market was a shortage of people willing to bet against it.”

Michael Lewis book The Big Short

Source: The Big Short (2010), Chapter Three, " How Can A Guy Who Can't Speak English Lie?", p. 80

People, History

“Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

Women, For women

“People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to ﬁve without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no ‘mean guy’ who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding”

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

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 8

People, Way, Guy, Understanding

“No doubt there is much immature talking and hasty writing and will always be where liberty of speech and press prevails. The political, religious, and social views of any age and even of the most radical members of society, were born, long before their time. Those who invented the alphabet and the printing press are indirectly responsible for much of the violence of a changing social state; but in the same way, they are responsible for the progress of the world, for the enlightenment, for the civilization, and for all that makes the present better than the past.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Voltaire (1916)

Age, World, Way, Time

“Constrained by habits and acculturalization, we have less choice than we imagine. Many apparently momentous decisions were actually determined within us long ago. In the long run, the most powerful choice we can make is where to focus our attention. Attention is healing. Attention is the bridge in relationship. And attention facilitates change and learning.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, Oral presentation in Baltimore, MD March 2012

Imagination, Decision, Learning

“When in the course of human events somebody does something that puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require them to think are most disliked.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 1

Life, People, Thinking

“The fluctuations of certainty, the change
Of degrees of perception in the scholar’s dark.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

“Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they're depressed, they're down — Obama's not doing anything for 'em. How is that hoax and change workin' for ya? They're all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it's done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they're especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I'm sure Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out with their attitudes there either.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

On the Black state of mind, The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 8, 2009 http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200912080019

Feeling, Help

“Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worth while. It is surely not worth all the struggle and sacrifice, the stupendous loss in human life and cultural values that result from every revolution. If such a revolution were even to bring greater social well being (which has not been the case in Russia) then it would also not be worth the terrific price paid: mere improvement can be brought about without bloody revolution.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Life, Loss, Personality

“Some of the biggest changes have been in the process of generating business strategies—what I call “strategy work.” Around 1980, the received wisdom was to decentralize into business units, which would each generate a strategic plan. These plans were then amalgamated up the hierarchy, in some portfolio way, for senior management. That approach has all but disappeared, and we’ve seen a dramatic recentralization of strategy work.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Response to the question: "You’ve been teaching about, researching, and consulting on business and corporate strategy for 35 years. What changes have you seen in that time?"
"McKinsey Quarterly interview," 2007

Wisdom, Way, Business

“Microeconomics and macroeconomics are closely intertwined. Because changes in the overall economy arise from the decisions of millions of individuals, it is impossible to understand macroeconomic developments without considering the associated microeconomic decisions.”

N. Gregory Mankiw (1958) American economist

Source: Principles of Economics (1998-), Ch. 2. Thinking Like an Economist; p. 27

Understanding, Decision

“That's one of those questions, whether human beings are really capable of change, or if all seeming changes are really a matter of framing the existing character in a different moral situation.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Question

“Oh my life is changing everyday
In every possible way
And oh my dreams
It's never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems.”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Dreams"; first released as a single (29 September 1992)
Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993)

Life, Dreams, Way

“In much of precolonial Nigeria, and indeed Africa, ethnic nations organized people within communities into peer groups and trained them, from babyhood to old age, to serve their communities. When successful, this system provided all members of a community not only with a sense of belonging but also with a vehicle for helping to shape the community's direction and pace of change. In this system, people knew they were entitled to help resolve any issue that affected the community.
This sense of entitlement grows out of a series of rituals that begin the day a child is born. When a baby is born, after the first few seconds, it lets out a yelp, which announces its arrival, and which is met by expressions of joy. Among the Yoruba, the arrival is acknowledged with a naming ceremony where parents give names that express rich meaning and hopes for the baby. When I arrived, my parents named me Hafsat Olaronke, which means the treasured one and honor is being cared for. For my parents, they saw in me one who would be cherished and who would bring honor to her community. Many in other parts of the world are impressed when they discover my name's meanings, but the truth is that most African names have beautiful meanings.”

Hafsat Abiola (1974) Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist

Architects of Peace (2000)

People, Truth, Age, World

“We face today two practical dilemmas. The first can be succinctly described as the return of the ‘social question’. For Victorian reformers—or American activists of the pre-1914 age of reform—the challenge posed by the social question of their time was straightforward: how was a liberal society to respond to the poverty, overcrowding, dirt, malnutrition and ill health of the new industrial cities? How were the working masses to be brought into the community—as voters, as citizens, as participants—without upheaval, protest and even revolution? What should be done to alleviate the suffering and injustices to which the urban working masses were now exposed and how was the ruling elite of the day to be brought to see the need for change?
The history of the 20th century West is in large measure the history of efforts to answer these questions. The responses proved spectacularly successful: not only was revolution avoided but the industrial proletariat was integrated to a remarkable degree. Only in countries where any liberal reform was prevented by authoritarian rulers did the social question rephrase itself as a political challenge, typically ending in violent confrontation. In the middle of the 19th century, sharp-eyed observers like Karl Marx had taken it for granted that the only way the inequities of industrial capitalism could be overcome was by revolution. The idea that they could be dissolved peacefully into New Deals, Great Societies and welfare states simply never would have occurred to him.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 5 : What Is to be Done?

Health, Age, Way, History

“All of these things considered, it is not surprising that one can detect echoes, correspondences and even an eternal return or two within the work of a single author. The passage of time does bring changes, yea and alas; but still, I would recognize myself anywhere.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

In the introduction for the short-story collection Unicorn Variations (1983)

Time

“Humans are great lovers of consistency, and it annoys us that cats have different rules. Even if a cat is willing to give up her life for you, that does not mean that she is willing to change her mind at your request.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2

Life, Cats, Lovers

“I know what they think they seek. But I know it to be a lie. Listen to me, Arren. You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…. That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself—safety forever? That is what they seek to do on Wathort and Lorbanery and elsewhere. That is the message that those who know how to hear have heard: By denying life you may deny death and live forever!—And this message I do not hear, Arren, for I will not hear it. I will not take the counsel of despair.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)

Life, Death, Lie, Thinking

“On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 5, "Our March into the Desert"

Girl, Mountain, Star, Light

“Let us honor all honest human power of contrivance in its degree. The beaver intellect, so long as it steadfastly refuses to be vulpine, and answers the tempter pointing out short routes to it with an honest "No, no," is truly respectable to me; and many a highflying speaker and singer whom I have known, has appeared to me much less of a developed man than certain of my mill-owning, agricultural, commercial, mechanical, or otherwise industrial friends, who have held their peace all their days and gone on in the silent state. If a man can keep his intellect silent, and make it even into honest beaverism, several very manful moralities, in danger of wreck on other courses, may comport well with that, and give it a genuine and partly human character; and I will tell him, in these days he may do far worse with himself and his intellect than change it into beaverism, and make honest money with it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Money, Peace, Appearance

“It is irrelevant in that ethnies arc constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i. e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in distinctive myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population. In that sense much has been retained, and revived, from the extant heritage of ancient Greece. For, even at the time of Slavic migrations, in Ionia and especially in Constantinople, there was a growing emphasis on the Greek language, on Greek philosophy and literature, and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such a ‘Greek revival’ was to surface again in the tenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as subsequently, providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. This is not to deny for one moment either the enormous cultural changes undergone by the Greeks despite a surviving sense of common ethnicity or the cultural influence of surrounding peoples and civilizations over two thousand years. At the same time in terms of script and language, certain values, a particular environment and its nostalgia, continuous social interactions and a sense of religious and cultural difference, even exclusion, a sense of Greek identity and common sentiments of ethnicity can be said to have persisted”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: National Identity (1991), p. 30: About Ethnic Change, Dissolution and Survival

People, Literature, Sense, Nostalgia

“It is positive that the change in Finland means a rush in the elections and not in the streets.”

Tarja Halonen (1943) 11th President of Finland

Jytky yllätti Tarja Halosen: "Yli meni" http://www.iltasanomat.fi/vaalit2011/Jytky%20yll%C3%A4tti%20Tarja%20Halosen%20Yli%20meni/art-1288383903384.html Ilta-Sanomat 19 April 2011 In Finnish: On positiivinen asia, että Suomessa muutos merkitsee sitä, että rynnätään vaaliuurnille eikä kaduille (translated)

“What I am saying is two things. First, religion hasn’t obviously come closer to understanding the divine…. I also claim that insofar as theology or religious beliefs do change within a faith, those changes are driven largely by either science or changes in secular culture…. Religious morality, at least as promulgated by priests, rabbis, imams, and theologians, is usually one step behind secular morality.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), pp. 87-88

Faith, Religion, Understanding, Science

“When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

Detailing his philosophy, (2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/6366009.stm Arsenal (1996–present)

“Our life is like to dice, which ever fall
In varying combinations; no one form
Has man's existence, but 'tis full of change.”

Alexis (-372–-270 BC) Athenian poet of Middle Comedy

Stobaeus, Florilegium, CV., 4.

Life

“The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of men for its furtherance — these are what may make a vast, complex, ever growing, ever changing, ever more specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.”

Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967) American theoretical physicist and professor of physics

Science and the Common Understanding (1953)

Men, World, Communication, Knowledge

“Believe me,… the bitterness of life, or at least of mine, which runs through it like a strand of red, and becomes less and less endurable as I grow older, is not compensated in the hundredth part by the joy of life. I will freely admit that these burdens, which to me have been so grievous, would have been lighter to many another; but our temperament is part of ourselves, given to us by the Creator with our very existence, and we have very little power to change it. I find, on the other hand, in this very consciousness of the vanity of life, which nearly all men must confess to as they draw near the end, my strongest assurance of the approach of a more beautiful metamorphosis. In this, my dear friend, let us find comfort, and endeavour to call up calmness to bear life out to the end.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Kneller, Karl Alois, Kettle, Thomas Michael, 1911. "Christianity and the leaders of modern science; a contribution to the history of culture in the nineteenth century" https://archive.org/stream/christianitylead00kneluoft#page/44/mode/2up, Freiburg im Breisgau, p. 44-45

Life, Men, Beauty, Joy

“Cause it's a bitter sweet symphony, that's life
Try to make ends meet
you're a slave to money then you die.No change, I can change
I can change, I can change
But I'm here in my mold
I am here in my mold
and I'm a million different people
from one day to the next
I can't change my mould, no, no, no, no, no…”

Richard Ashcroft (1971) English singer-songwriter

Urban Hymns (1997)

Life, Money, People

“Easier to keep changing your life than to live it.”

James Richardson (1950) American poet

#55
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten Second Essays (2001)

Life

“Why are they [people] more likely to listen to people who tell them they can't make changes than they are to people who tell them they can?”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Page 169.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

People

“There no longer seems to be the fear of retribution, we are empowering each other. We are encouraging each other to change business models, to try new ventures. We are banding together to support each other, to give each other advice, to change our existing culture. I believe that we are on the verge of creating a new antitype.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

Fear, Business, Support

“Bala is unique in many ways. The way he changed Tamil cinema's character was commendable. Awards are not just reflections on the cinematic qualities but also the ability to change other filmmakers.”

Bala (1966) Indian film director

Way

“I do believe that encyclopedias are dead as dodos in the old fashioned way. Let me just go back, because earlier around I was interviewed and I said: The book will always be with us. Books - we used to read in scrolls and then they got invented the codex which is basically the form of the book. It has not been improved on. It's like scissors, like a spoon, and like a hammer. It's technology that's perfect in itself and will remain very good. But: What about the content inside of it? Now, there are books that you read for information. And there what you want to do is how to get the information. And it is infinitely more efficient, of higher quality, to use digital sources rather than the published sources for references. So dictionaries and encyclopedias are not going to be done in this very ponderous way of having old books that by the time they come out the information in them is obsolete. Second, you have to search in all of these and open the pages and then you go to an index and come back whereas you can type to search in. […] But if you want to hold in your hand a slim volume, nicely bound, of the love sonnets of Shakespeare or historical romans, that's a different story. There is the book as artifact, there is the joy in holding the book. And there is an efficiency in the book that you can carry with you in different ways. But I think that the encyclopedias and the dictionaries really are providing a service. And that service can be provided so much more efficiently online that they are bound to change. And if they don't change themselves and go online themselves … I mean, the old providers, like Britannica, will go online, will provide it, and will try to, in fact, compete with the model that Wikipedia pioneered.”

Ismail Serageldin (1944) egyptian academic

Wikimania 2008 press conference 0'33 (August 2008).

Love, Books, Way, Search

“The idea that work is something apportioned out by men leaves people discontent with their portion and dubious about whether work is a good thing at all. … The ancient injunction to labor fades when we regard our work as cut out for us by men, who, by present dogma, are no better than ourselves. That curious modern hypostatization “service” is often called in to substitute for the now incomprehensible doctrine of vocation. It tries to secure subordination by hypothesizing something larger than the self, which turns out, however, to be only a multitude of selfish selves. The familiar change from quality to quantity may again be noted; one serves not the higher part of the self (this entails hierarchy) … but merely consumer demand. And who admires those at the top of a hierarchy of consumption? Man as a consuming animal is thus seen to be not enough.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 77.

Men, People, Idea, Animals

“Without conviction that you can make change happen, you will not act, even if you see the vision. Your feelings will hold you back.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 5, p. 115
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Feeling

“We are delighted to see that some political parties (e. g. DPP) have decided to change their approach and start a dialogue with mainland China. More communication between Taiwan and the Mainland can only help to reduce differences within Taiwan and achieve consensus, so the KMT welcomes such developments.”

Wu Po-hsiung (1939) Taiwanese politician

Wu lauds DPP’s China department (2012)

Communication, Help

“They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 159).

People, World, Way, Imagination

“I say that this Bill has been changed in its most vital features, and yet it has always been found perfect by hon. Members behind the Treasury Bench. The Prime Minister [William Gladstone] calls "black," and they say, "it is good": the Prime Minister calls "white," and they say "it is better." It is always the voice of a god. Never since the time of Herod has there been such slavish adulation.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Cheers, cries of "Progress!" and "Judas!" Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1893/jul/27/committee-progress-new-clauses-26th-july#column_724 in the House of Commons (27 July 1893) against the Irish Home Rule Bill 1890s

God, Time, Perfection

“Those who expect radical changes in policy and direction are mistaken and lost. The government of the fourth republic will build on what was undertaken by previous governments and will continue with all good things.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

During his inauguration ceremony, 2005-12-21 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4548136.stm 2005

“I got those, Data’s chair and console, the side walls, and some panels from Vegas. And though I didn’t know I'd have the entire bridge someday, I knew they were an invaluable history of Trek,
I couldn't allow it to bring me down. I spent almost a year trying to convince people to help me. If worst came to worst it could go to a rich guy’s house but then no one would see it.
Once this happened, that's how this bridge got forgotten about—people changed hands, people got fired,
I didn't know if he had standing assembled walls or what,
My whole thing was: this is good, it's great to have a dream, but it’s great to have your feet on the floor too.
They said: ‘You have to do something. This can't remain in this condition.”

Huston Huddleston

December 2012 https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/12/captain-i-saved-the-bridge-boldly-going-where-no-tv-set-has-gone-before/

People, Dreams, Guy, History

“I can't honestly say that I appreciate the way in which he changed baseball — from a game of science to an extension of his powerful slugging — but he was the most natural and unaffected man I ever knew. No one ever loved life more. No one ever inspired more youngsters. I have reverence for his marvelous ability. I look forward to meeting him again some day.”

Ty Cobb (1886–1961) American baseball player

On Babe Ruth, in Ch. 16 : The Babe and I, p. 222
My Life In Baseball : The True Record (1961)

Love, Life, Way, Game

“The problem with conformists will always be that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system. It's the system that will eventually change you”

Immortal Technique (1978) American rapper and activist

The Poverty of Philosophy
Albums, Revolutionary Vol. 1 (2001)

Problem

“The men of faith might claim for their positions ancient tradition, practical usefulness, and spiritual desirability, but one query could prick all such bubbles: Is it scientific? That question has searched religion for contraband goods, stripped it of old superstitions, forced it to change its categories of thought and methods of work, and in general has so cowed and scared religion that many modern-minded believers… instinctively throw up their hands at the mere whisper of it… When a prominent scientist comes out strongly for religion, all the churches thank Heaven and take courage, as though it were the highest possible compliment to God to have Eddington believe in Him. Science has become the arbiter of this generation's thought, until to call even a prophet and a seer "scientific" is to cap the climax of praise.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

As I See Religion (1932)

Men, God, Faith, Religion

“Doesn't every sentence somehow contain in itself, at least by implication, the whole argument? Sure. So what? Remember that any sentence can be changed, rewritten, thrown out or contradicted. That lets you write anything at all.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Writing for Social Scientists (1986), p. 70.

“When you were a child, I loved you. I loved your grave face and the confidence with which you came to me, asking me to mend your broken toys. And then, after eight years' absence, you came again and sat here, and brought me the thoughts that were in your mind. And your mind, Renisenb, is not like the minds of the rest of your family. It does not turn in upon itself, seeking to encase itself in narrow walls. Your mind is like my mind, it looks over the River, seeing a world of changes, of new ideas - seeing a world where all things are possible to those with courage and vision…”

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

Hori
(1945)

Love, World, Family, Confidence

“"To renew" applies when we are fighting with the enemy, and an entangled spirit arises where there is no possible resolution. We must abandon our efforts, think of the situation in a fresh spirit then win in the new rhythm. To renew, when we are deadlocked with the enemy, means that without changing our circumstance we change our spirit and win through a different technique.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Thinking, Effort, Fight

“While most of these intellectuals have taken public stances against racism and white supremacy, have opposed Nazism and apartheid South Africa, seem to oppose colonialism, old and new, most of them partake of a Sartrian legacy which refuses to see a change in the status of European Jews, who are still represented only as holocaust survivors in Europe. The status of the European Jew as a coloniser who has used racist colonial violence for the last century against the Palestinian people is a status they refuse to recognise and continue to resist vehemently.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"The legacy of Jean-Paul Sartre"

People

“I am surprised at all the people in the high-tech industry focused on "making money"… If that's all they want to do, they should have a $100 printing press in their basements and they will truly "make money." Instead, if we focus all that energy on innovation, we'll change the world for the best.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

Commencement speech for UCSC students 1996 | UCSC Press Release http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/press_releases/archive/95-96/06-96/061196-Graduation_ceremoni.html.

Money, People, World

“Southern man better keep your head.
Don't forget what your good book said.
Southern change gonna come at last
Now your crosses are burning fast.
Southern man.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Southern Man
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

Books, Forgetting

“George W. Bush has said he wants to change things in Washington. On this President's Day, we find him attempting this change in a most profound way. President Bush is to be commended for his recent Proclamation of National Sanctity of Human Life Day, in which he reminds his fellow citizens of the true principles of free government. But those principles today are usually ignored, or scorned. By taking up the challenge of defending these principles, President Bush aligns himself with the greatest President of our nation's history.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)

Life, Way, History

“Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public -- and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, December 12, 2008, "A democratic Iraq within reach" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer121208.php3 at jewishworldreview.com. 2000s, 2008

Money, World, History, Personality

“Whatever your opinion of the post-9/11 wars, the need to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, none of that changes the decades old strategy and ideology of Global Jihad. Long before there was a Bush in the White House, Muslims with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam declared war on all that is Un-Islamic, be it located in the Middle East, Europe or the US. Theirs is a totalitarian ideology, as universalist and absolute as anything Hitler or Stalin came up with, albeit with a holy sanction and promise of salvation. We are in their crosshairs as much as Assad, Maliki, or Sisi. Either everyone must live under Islamic law in a Caliphate, or they must die. Whether they live in a Christian enclave in Norther Iraq, or Washington, New York, or Houston.”

Sebastian Gorka (1970) American politician

Why ISIS is More Dangerous than Al Qaeda and What America Must Do About It http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/07/09/why-isis-is-more-dangerous-than-al-qaeda-and-what-america-must-do-about-it/ (July 9, 2014)

War, Law, Housing

“Tendencies tend to change.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Zire Notes (May 2004 - December 2006)

“Geologists discover… an almost complete difference to exist between the species or stamp of life, of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore led to admit, either of a repeated miraculous creation; or of a power of change, under a change of circumstances, to belong to living organised matter, or rather to the congeries of inferior life, which appears to form superior.”

Patrick Matthew (1790–1874) British scientist

On naval timber and arboriculture (1831), Appendix F, part II

Life, Appearance

“There is rarely an exception: once a cat makes up her mind to do something, your pleadings matter not at all. A dog, in the same circumstances, no matter how urgently he needs to do something, will change his mind if you insist. He is made for compromise, for self-sacrifice, for thinking about how you feel. Not cats.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats (2002), Ch. 2

Dogs, Feeling, Cats, Thinking

“I have asked many teachers and parents what they thought mathematics to be and why it was important to learn it. Few held a view of mathematics that was sufficiently coherent to justify devoting several thousand hours of a child's life to learning it, and children sense this. When a teacher tells a student that the reason for those many hours of arithmetic is to be able to check the change at the supermarket, the teacher is simply not believed. Children see such "reasons" as one more example of adult double talk. The same effect is produced when children are told school math is "fun" when they are pretty sure that teachers who say so spend their leisure hours on anything except this allegedly fun-filled activity. Nor does it help to tell them that they need math to become scientists---most children don't have such a plan. The children can see perfectly well that the teacher does not enjoy math any more than they do and that the reason for doing it is simply that it has been inscribed into the curriculum. All of this erodes children's confidence in the adult world and the process of education. And I think it introduces a deep element of dishonestly into the education relationship.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

Life, Children, World, Education

“Getting information is only the beginning. Transparency in government must be accompanied by the public's right to be heard and to influence government policy. The first objective is to get the facts, for without facts we are powerless to oppose government decisions or bring about change. The next step is to open up the decision-making process so we finally have a government accountable to those it serves. This should be our right and not a privilege.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 8.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Decision

“I don't agree with the notion that some are putting out there — including scientists — that somehow, there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what's happening in our climate. Our climate is always changing. And what they have chosen to do is take a handful of decades of research, and say that this is now evidence of a longer-term trend that's directly and almost solely attributable to manmade activity.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

This Week http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-defense-secretary-chuck-hagel-sen-marco/story?id=23667691, ABC News, , quoted in * 2014-05-11 Marco Rubio Says Scientists Are Wrong: 'Human Activity' Does Not Cause Climate Change David Crooks and Liars http://crooksandliars.com/2014/05/marco-rubio-says-scientists-are-wrong 2014-05-17 2010s, 2014

“Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

L'amour est une source naïve, partie de son lit de cresson, de fleurs, de gravier, qui rivière, qui fleuve, change de nature et d'aspect à chaque flot, et se jette dans un incommensurable océan où les esprits incomplets voient la monotonie, où les grandes âmes s'abîment en de perpétuelles contemplations.
The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831), Part II: A Woman Without a Heart

Love, Soul, Spring, Flowers

“She is in other words a classic demagogue,” said von Bek…“It was Hitler’s secret that he could seem one thing to one group and an entirely different thing to another. That is how they rise so swiftly to power. These creatures are bizarre. They can virtually change shape and colour. They have an amophous quality and yet at the same time they have a will to dominate others which is unrelenting, almost their only consistent trait, their only reality.”

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

Book 2, Chapter 9 (p. 612)
Erekosë, The Dragon in the Sword (1986)

Secret, Reality, Time

“Where I used to stand up alone seven years ago, now I belong to a community of many people who stand up with me. I am no longer alone when I stand up to speak about these things. I belong to a group of young people who are passionate about the country, who want to bring about change, and they're no longer afraid, and they're no longer smart cowards. So that was my story.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

People, Communication, Passion, Country

“Many childless single woman would be at my age already in panic. Also I have been thinking for the last 3 years, why I have been sacrificing so much time for my work. But, I have ended up to a thought that I would never change a single day out of my life. It would be lovely to get a family one day, but my life doesn't end even if that would not happen.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Anna interview (2005)

Love, Life, Age, Family

“I see it up there in the corner of my eye:
the General's tomb standing all alone.
If I could change my fate, become a man
of heroic deed, couldn't I do better?”

Hồ Xuân Hương (1772–1822) Vietnamese poet

"At the Chinese General's Tomb"
Spring Essence (2000)

Fate

“The Great Change is when humankind accepts its role as part of the natural order of the universe instead of its role as a cancer.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 38 (p. 369)

Nature, Universe, Parting

“Whatever his views are this morning, they might change this afternoon, and they were different than they were last night, and they’ll be different tomorrow. … They seem to be ever, ever-changing, depending on what crowd he’s in front of. Sounds like a typical politician, by the way, where you get in front of one crowd and say one thing, and then say something else to another crowd that may want to hear a different view. All the things that Donald Trump railed against, he seems to be morphing into — it’s kind of disturbing. … He doesn’t believe in things, this is all a game.”

Jeb Bush (1953) American politician, former Governor of Florida

About Donald Trump's views — Jeb Bush Says He’s Not Buying The Trump Immigration Shift https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/jeb-bush-says-hes-not-buying-the-trump-immigration-shift?utm_term=.xtWW3bwaw#.iaPobDJKJ, BuzzFeed (August 25, 2016)

Way, Game, Dependency, Night

“Organizations make two responses to deal with the behavior control problem. The first change involves the substitution of craft or professional training of the work force for the detailed centralized programming of the work processes.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 12

Behavior, Problem, Training

“All my life I have tried to do too many different things. I wonder if this is not a perpetual dilemma for women. A man enters on a job or profession, needs to stick to it to earn his living, and is unlikely to have to change it on marriage. For a woman marriage presents not only practical problems, but she finds herself emotionally pulled all ways, and tends by tradition and impulse to put the needs of others before her own. What is more, opening her eyes on the world, she feels intensely responsible for setting it to rights.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. IX

Life, Women, Marriage, World

“There’s no single right way to accomplish your goals. Each of us has a number of avenues to reach our potential. The world constantly changes. Life often unfolds as a series of phases. Our potential is likely to evolve as the world evolves and as we continue to learn, grow, and develop our capabilities.
Reaching your potential is not simply about dreaming or being idealistic, It is a process that involve specific actions, exercises, discipline and hard work. It is challenging, rewarding and unending.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 11

Life, World, Dreams, Way

“Sonny, I'm old enough to have changed your nappies.”

Jeannette Piccard (1895–1981) American balloonist, scientist, teacher and priest

To John Allin, presiding bishop, Episcopal Church of the United States, who had asked the Philadelphia Eleven not to proceed with their ordination as priests.
Quoted in [Goldman, Ari L., Religion Notes, The New York Times, 30 July 1994, http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30813F63C5D0C738FDDAE0894DC494D81]

“All portions of All That Is are constantly changing, enfolding, and unfolding. All That Is, seeking to know Itself, constantly creates new versions of Itself. For this seeking Itself is a creative activity and the core of all action.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 269-270

“They come transfigured back,
Secure from change in their high-hearted ways,
Beautiful evermore, and with the rays
Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation!”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

St. 8. Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)

Beauty, Way, Heart

“Lang kept at it until everyone had had a turn shooting an AK-47. Then he said, "This weapon can do one other thing I haven't shown you yet. When you move the change lever all the way down instead of to the middle position, this is what happens." He stuck a fresh clip in the repeater, turned toward the target circle, and blasted away. He went through the whole magazine almost before Caudell could draw in a startled breath. "Good God almighty," Rufus Daniel said, peering in awe at the brass cartridge cases scattered around Lang's feet. "Why didn't he show us that in the first place?" He was not the only one to raise the question; quite a few shouted it. Caudell kept quiet. By now, he was willing to assume Lang knew what he was doing. The weapons instructor stayed perfectly possessed. He said, "I didn't show you that earlier because it wastes ammunition and because the weapon accurate past a few meters- yards- on full automatic. You can only carry so many rounds. If you shoot them all off in the first five minutes of battle, what will you do once they're gone? Think hard on that, gentlemen, and drill it into your private soldiers. This weapon requires fire discipline- requires it, I say again."”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 31

God, Way, Question, Thinking

“If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth Speaks (1972), p. 172

Life, Feeling, Nature, Time

“Nobody liked the caesar haircut. It was such an issue this year. There were memos about it. (…) I knew it was doomed when my grandmother, who swore she would never leave Ireland again, came over for the last time, walked in the door and told me I had to change my hairstyle. Not for my own sake, but because I had 'relations' and it's embarrassing for them.”

Joshua Jackson (1978) Canadian actor

As quoted in the article "Dawson's Geek" in Us Weekly magazine (October 1998)

Time

“One of the first major steps in the direction of modern skepticism came through the victory of Occam over Aquinas in a controversy about language. The statement that modi essendi were replaced by modi significandi et intelligendi, or that ontological referents were abandoned in favor of pragmatic significations, describes broadly the change in philosophy which continues to our time. From Occam to Bacon, from Bacon to Hobbes, and from Hobbes to contemporary semanticists, the progression is clear: ideas become psychological figments, words become useful signs.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“The Power of the Word,” p. 36.
Language is Sermonic (1970)

Idea, Time, Victory

“We can tell murder is wrong because we have objective criteria by which we can determine for certain whether murder is wrong, and we can do that regardless of what mood the gods are in nowadays. There has to be an objectively verifiable reason why something is moral or immoral, or else no one could know whether it is, including God, since the Bible has Him changing His mind all the time. Without that criteria, you couldn't know what is moral or immoral either; you just have to trust whatever the people said who pretended to speak for God.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God, People, Mood, Time

“I want to drive home the message that we have to go beyond Copenhagen, beyond drawing room politics and sensitise ourselves, and try and make a change on an individual level.”

Manav Gupta (1967) Indian artist

"Beyond Politics, Beyond Copenhagen, For Our Children" : Treatise, Travelling trilogy, Lectures and Films on Sustainable development by Manav Gupta (2009 -2010), as quoted in Hindustan Times (25 December 2009)
2000s

Home, Drawing