Quotes about change
page 48

“Giraldus mingles in the crowd, catches its accents, is borne along by its changing passions, and thus becomes a very mirror of that fighting, chaffering, praying age.”

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Sir John E Lloyd A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (1912) Vol. 1, p. 564.
Criticism

Age, Passion, Fight

“And so with us, she thought. We come, we go, and, as individuals, we are forgotten. But the stream of human life goes on, ever changing, but ever the same, and as the stream is fed by well-springs hoarded by Nature so the stream of humanity is fed by the store of accumulated wisdom and effort and hard-won experience of past generations.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Concluding paragraph to novel
Still Glides the Stream

Life, Wisdom, Spring, Nature

“I mean by pacifism, not the love of peace as a good to be secured by a definite form of action, but the belief that any form of social constraint of others or any violent action is in itself wrong, and that violence such as war must be passively resisted because to use violence to end violence would be logically self-contradictory. I oppose pacifism in this sense to the Communist belief that the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

Love, War, Peace, Way

“Over and above the specific theorems created by men such as Desargues, Pascal and La Hire, several new ideas and outlooks were beginning to appear. The first is the idea of continuous change of a mathematical entity from one state to another… [i. e., of a] a geometrical figure. It was Kepler, in his Astronomiae Optica of 1604, who first seemed to grasp the fact that parabola, ellipse, hyperbola, circle, and the degenerate conic consisting of a pair of lines are continuously derivable from each other…. The notion of a continuous change in a figure was also employed by Pascal. He allowed two consecutive vertices of his hexagon to approach each other so that the figure became a pentagon. In the same manner he passed from pentagons to quadrilaterals.
The second idea to emerge from the work of the projective geometers is that of transformation and invariance. To project a figure from some point and then take a section of that projection is to transform the figure to a new one. The properties… of interest are those that remain invariant under transformation. Other geometers of the seventeenth century, for example, Gregory of St. Vincent… and Newton, introduced transformations other than projection and section.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), pp. 298-299

Men, Mathematics, Idea, Appearance

“What is the alternative to collective bargaining? There is none except anarchy, and there are rare elements in the country that would like to see anarchy in the trade unions—in my view the most dangerous thing for the country that could happen. Another alternative is force, but we may rule out force in this country, and I would lay it down that, so long as the industrial system remains as it is, collective bargaining is the right thing. I have no doubt about that. And yet we all know in our heart of hearts that it may be a clumsy method of settling disputes, and that the last word has not been spoken. Some day, when we are all fit for a democracy, we shall not need these aids, but certainly for my part, and as long as I can see ahead, unless there is that change in human nature which we are always hoping for, collective bargaining will be a necessity.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937). 1937

Hope, Democracy, Nature, Heart

“Here appears a child plainly not normal, what shall we do with him? Shall we, as some have advocated, even from Spartan days, hold that the weaklings should be destroyed? No. In cultivating plant life, while we destroy much that is unfit, we are constantly on the lookout for what has been called the abnormal, that which springs apart in new lines. How many plants are there in the world to-day that were not in one sense once abnormalities? No; it is the influence of cultivation, of selection, of surroundings, of environment, that makes the change from the abnormal to the normal. From the children we are led to call abnormal, may come, under wise cultivation and training, splendid normal natures.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Life, Children, World, Spring

“As a schoolboy drawing-lessons became my favorite, and that pleasure was not ignited a little when, by the time of my twelfth year, the cityscape-painter B. J. van Hove became our neighbor. Since then I began to long for the moment that I would be allowed to change the school bench for a place in his studio. That desire was already satisfied in the autumn of [18]31.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

origineel citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in Nederlands: Als schoolknaap was de teekenles mij de liefste geworden en die lust werd niet weinig aangewakkerd, toen, omstreeks mijn twaalfde jaar, de stadsgezichtschilder B. J. van Hove onze buurman werd. Sinds dien tijd begon ik sterk te verlangen naar het oogenblik, waarop ik de schoolbank tegen een plaatsje in zijn atelier zou mogen verwisselen. Dat verlangen werd reeds bevredigd in het najaar van [18]31.
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 7

Pleasure, School, Autumn, Time

“What we’re after is to remind ourselves that we didn’t come to Anarres for safety, but for freedom. If we must all agree, all work together, we’re no better than a machine. If an individual can’t work in solidarity with his fellows, it’s his duty to work alone. His duty and his right. We have been denying people that right. We’ve been saying, more and more often, you must work with the others, you must accept the rule of the majority. But any rule is tyranny. The duty of the individual is to accept no rule, to be the initiator of his own acts, to be responsible. Only if he does so will the society live, and change, and adapt, and survive. We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 12 (p. 359)

People, Law, Hope, Freedom

“Supposing I'm now 21, 22, what would I do? I would not be absorbed in wanting to change life in Singapore. I'm not responsible for Singapore…Why should I go and undertake this job and spend my whole life pushing this for a lot of people for whom nothing is good enough? I will have a fall-back position, which many are doing - have a house in Perth or Vancouver or Sydney, or an apartment in London, in case I need some place suddenly, and think about whether I go on to America.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, The Man & His Ideas, 1997
1990s

Life, People, Thinking, Housing

“When you are under the control of a label, you don't always get to have the sound you like. If I could change it, I would, and it would sound [less pop]. My name is Hilary Duff, and I don't know why I don't get to make Hilary Duff music. I just have to get the freedom to do it, and during the show, I do get to do that: I get to throw away all of the CD stuff that has been mastered and sounds really pretty, and I get to sing live.”

Hilary Duff (1987) American actress and singer

DeRogatis, Jim. "Is She for Real?" http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20050719/ai_n14877317. Chicago Sun-Times. July 19 2005. Retrieved October 25 2006.

Music, Freedom, Singing

“Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum,
The haunts of sensual life, adieu!
Green fields, and silent glens we come,
To spend this bright spring-day with you.Whether the hills and vales shall gleam
With beauty, is for us to choose;
For leaf and blossom, rock and stream,
Are coloured with the spirit's hues.Here, to the seeking soul, is brought
A nobler view of human fate,
And higher feeling, higher thought,
And glimpses of a higher state.Through change of time, on sea and shore,
Serenely nature smiles away;
Yon infinite blue sky bends o'er
Our world, as at the primal day.The self-renewing earth is moved
With youthful life each circling year;
And flowers that Ceres' daughter loved
At Enna, now are blooming here.Glad nature will this truth reveal,
That God is ours and we are His.
O friends, my friends! what joy to feel
That He our loving Father is!”

James Aldrich (1810–1856) American editor and minor poet

A Spring-Day Walk.

Love, Life, God, Fate

“I'm a frustrated patriot. I'm not a politician. I'm not savvy with radio and TV. But I believe I can make a change, and that's what I'm here for. I'm here to give people a third choice.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

[Jourdan, Kristi, Tea Party hopeful - gives voters third choice, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1B, March 8, 2010]

People

“… the organization chart will initially reflect the first system design, which is almost surely not the right one [… ] as one learns, he changes the design [… ]. Management structures also need to be changed as the system changes…”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (1975, 1995)

Learning

“The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society: informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people. Of course, the means and methods of accomplishing these ends have changed as society has changed.”

Edward Bernays (1891–1995) American public relations consultant, marketing pioneer

Public Relations (1952) p. 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=wBFP_qrOYk8C&pg=PA12

People

“The final test of painting, theirs, mine, any other, is; does the painter’s emotion comes across?.... Procedure is the keyword.... The difference is that we don't begin with a definite sense of procedure. It's free association from the start to the finished state. The old idea was to make use of your talent. This, we feel, is often to take the line of least resistance.... painters like Rothko, Pollock, Still, perhaps in reaction to the tendency to analyze which has dominated painting from Seurat to Albers, associate with very little analysis. A new form of expressionism inevitably followed. With De Kooning the procedure is continual change, and the immediacy of the change. With Jackson, it's the confidence you feel from the concentration of his energy in a given picture..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1958
Quote from Kline, in Conversations with Artists, Seldon Rothman, New York Capricorn Books, 1961, p. 106 - 109: Talk ing about the Abstract expressionists
1960's

Feeling, Confidence, Idea, Sense

“I'm gonna take a wild guess—I think that was Buddy DeFranco, and possibly the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The band strikes me as an enigma, in that, first of all, some interesting harmonic things are happening as far as the individual voicings are concerned, but yet it's played in an older, tighter fashion. For instance, the bass player, if there are chord changes happening every two beats, plays the root for two beats, then the next root for two beats—that type of sound. The harmony, especially in the opening part where the theme is established, is a lot more modern than that kind of band would normally sound. I think that they're playing that way to keep that Miller identity, with that rhythmic tightness”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing DeFranco's arrangement of Billy Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge", from the album Glenn Miller Orchestra Under the Direction of Buddy DeFranco; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#2nmgk677qzm4cnu by Leonard Feather, in Downbeat (October 19, 1967), p. 38

Way, Fashion, Thinking, Parting

“No one grows up. That’s one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don’t want to be in… and they make the best of it. But don’t try to tell me it’s some kind of… glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It’s not.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Fiction, Distress (1995)

People

“In a theory in which parameters are added to quantum mechanics to determine the results of individual measurements, without changing the statistical predictions, there must be a mechanism whereby the setting of one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument, however remote. Moreover, the signal involved must propagate instantaneously, so that such a theory could not be Lorentz invariant. Of course, the situation is different if the quantum mechanical predictions are of limited validity. Conceivably they might apply only to experiments in which the settings of the instruments are made sufficiently in advance to allow them to reach some mutual rapport by exchange of signals with velocity less than or equal to that of light. In that connection, experiments of the type proposed by Bohm and Aharonov, in which the settings are changed during the flight of the particles, are crucial.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (1964)

Light, Reading

“The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter I, "War", p. 27.

Religion, Science

“The ultimate beauty secret for a woman getting older is, Don't be too thin! When you are just muscle, you end up being gaunt in the face, and that makes you look older by 5 or 10 years. I don't think of getting older as looking better or worse; it's just different. You change, and that's OK. Life is about change. I don't have anxiety about it, so I'm not running to get Botox. Maybe that will change, but I don't think so. I feel comfortable in my skin and comfortable with aging, so I think it's OK that I get wrinkles.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

From Self Magazine, December 2010

Life, Secret, Age, Beauty

“There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body.
Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

Sense

“I started hearing from families who had missing members, many of them young kids on our campus, and they all would describe the same sorts of things. A sudden change of personality, a new way of talking…and then they would disappear. And bingo, it was the same sort of thing as with the Korean War prisoners, the same sort of thought-reform and social controls. You find it again and again, any time people feel vulnerable. There are always sharpies around who want to hornswoggle people.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Margaret Singer - expert on brainwashing http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/25/BAGAG3A5A11.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, November 25, 2003 2003

War, People, Family, Way

“He's had a tough life. As is not unusual in Jewish families - if you've ever seen the movie Avalon - I think somebody's cut the turkey on Uncle Louis a few years ago… That doesn't change my view of him when I was young and he was a detective.”

Howard Safir (1941)

Safir, reponding to the disparaging comments made about him by his uncle, Louis Weiner (who captured the bandit Willie Sutton)
[Russ Baker and Josh Benson, http://www.observer.com/1999/commish-bites-back-howard-safir-explains-his-life-his-critics, The Commish Bites Back: Howard Safir Explains His Life to His Critics, The New York Observer, 1999-05-16, 2007-12-20]

Life, Family, Thinking

“Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful people of the Greeks, the safe way of science. But it must not be supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to make for itself that royal road. I believe, on the contrary, that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be ascribed to a revolution, produced by the happy thought of a single man, whose experiments pointed unmistakably to the path that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of that intellectual revolution, which was far more important than the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been preserved to us. … A new light flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the isosceles triangle (whether his name was Thales or any other name), for he found that he had not to investigate what he saw hi the figure, or the mere concepts of that figure, and thus to learn its properties; but that he had to produce (by construction) what he had himself, according to concepts a priori, placed into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept.”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Pure Reason

Preface to the Second Edition [Tr. F. Max Müller], (New York, 1900), p. 690; as cited in: Robert Edouard Moritz, Memorabilia mathematica or, The philomath's quotation-book https://openlibrary.org/books/OL14022383M/Memorabilia_mathematica, Published 1914. p. 10 Critique of Pure Reason (1781; 1787)

Happiness, People, Hope, Way

“For the Lorentz transformation spatial measurements are also changed, because they are obtained relative to a moving system. In our example only time was transformed, while the distances between points at rest remained the same; the spatial coordinates, therefore, retain their identity.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Time

“The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world.”

Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) United States Senator from New York

InsideOut Hudson Valley, January/February 2009

World, Reality, Time, Housing

“The two parties represent two opposite moods of the English mind, which may be trusted, unless past experience is wholly useless, to succeed each other from time to time. Neither of them, neither the love of organic changes nor the dislike of it, can be described as normal to a nation. In every nation, they have succeeded each other at varying intervals during the whole of the period which separates its birth from its decay. Each finds in the circumstances and constitution of individuals a regular support which never deserts it. Among men, the old, the phlegmatic, the sober-minded, among classes, those who have more to lose than to gain by change, furnish the natural Conservatives. The young, the envious, the restless, the dreaming, those whose condition cannot easily be made worse, will be rerum novarum cupidi.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

But the two camps together will not nearly include the nation: for the vast mass of every nation is unpolitical.
Quarterly Review, 133, 1872, pp. 583-584
1870s

Love, Men, Dreams, Birth

“hold your head up high to face the past
stare it in the teeth
question everything you never ask
the earth shall drink the meek is there lighting in your veins
is there something that remains
nothings ever gonna change
so take yourself out in the rain
life is leadin while you wait
waitin for your judgement day”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

Judgement Day https://aliciawitt.bandcamp.com/track/judgement-day Lyrics, Live at Rockwood (2012)

Life, Drink, Question, Light

“In the case of agriculture and drought, there’s a clear and accessible action most citizens can take: reducing or, ideally, eliminating the consumption of animal products. Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent.”

James E. McWilliams (1968) American historian

"Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty", in The New York Times (7 March 2014) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html.

Food, Water, Animals

“The American capitalists are richer and stronger than their counterparts in other lands. They are also younger and more ignorant, and therefore more inclined to seek a rough settlement of difficulties without diplomatic subtlety and finesse. All that does not change the fact that American capitalism operates according to the same laws as the others, is confronted with the same fundamental problems, and is headed toward the same catastrophe.”

James P. Cannon (1890–1974) American politician

Fascism and the workers' part

Law, Problem

“The best approach to this cultural revolution is therefore through family and household, i. e. through the structure of relations between the secondhand generations. In most societies this had been impressively resistant to sudden change, though this does not mean that such structures were static.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

Source: The Age of Extremes (1992), Chapter Eleven, Cultural Revolution, p.320

Family

“They know, in that changing room, that the strength is that changing room.”

Phil Brown (footballer) (1959) English association football player and manager

30-Jun-2005, Radio Derby
Answers on a postcard please.

“Clocks are inherently four-dimensional instruments, since the endpoints of their unit distances are events. Measuring rods, on the other hand, are three-dimensional measuring instruments; their end points are space points and they can be changed into four-dimensional measuring instruments only if events are produced at their end points according to a special rule.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear the most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. xix

People, Fear, Feeling, Chance

“I tell you, Satan's gonna have no trouble taking over here 'cause all the women are gonna say: "What a cute butt." "He's Satan!" "You don't know him like I do." "He's the Prince of Darkness!" "I can change him."”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Arizona Bay (1997)

Women

“Grey was an ambitious man who always wished to lead, but his overt ambition during his youth made him unpopular. He lacked the warmth of personality that made Fox revered by his followers. Grey was respected but rarely loved. His achievements were few, but they were significant. He helped to keep liberal principles alive during the years of conflict with revolutionary France, and in 1832 he safeguarded the continuity of the British constitution into an era of increasingly rapid social and political change. In character he was a man of contradictions, headstrong but easily discouraged by failure, imperious but indecisive, cautious and introspective. He was at his best when in office, for he sought fame and reputation: in opposition he often became despondent. He was a man of principle and integrity, though not always successful in execution. His bearing and attitudes were aristocratic, and his instincts were fundamentally conservative. He was a whig of the eighteenth-century school, most at home among his deferential clients, tenants, and labourers at Howick, and he never came to terms with the new industrial society which was coming into being during his later years. It is greatly to his credit that his Reform Act, whatever its conservative purpose, smoothed the path for that new society to establish its dominance without destroying the old.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

E. A. Smith, ‘ Grey, Charles, second Earl Grey (1764–1845) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11526’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2009, accessed 8 Sept 2012. About

Love, Youth, School, Home

“Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

Source: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2005), Ch. 24.

Life, Lie, World, Idea

“The rout of fascism, in which the Soviet Union played the decisive role, generated a mighty tide of socio-political changes which swept across the globe.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Selected Speeches and Writings (1980) edited by Mikhail Andreevich Suslov

Decision

“Ideas change the world, but they do it by assuming shape, they do it by taking concrete form.”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 6, Structure, p. 60

World, Idea

“We want to get young people excited about inventing so they'll be future inventors, and change the world.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[9, NewsBank, Click Life - Where kids get plugged in, New York Daily News, July 2, 2000, Alissa MacMillan]

People, World, Future

“On Barack Obama: "No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous 'Change you can believe in,' it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. 'We will be the most powerful,' he often declared."”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

John Pilger, "The Madmen Did Well" http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2009/05/barack-obama-pilger-bush, New Statesman, 30 April 2009

War

“It is ill changing the creed to meet each rising temptation. The soul is truer than it seems, and refuses to be trifled with.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Soul

“You strike the match… why not be utterly changed to fire?
To sacrifice the shadow and the mist of a brief life you never much liked?”

Aaron Weiss

Four-Word Letter, Pt 2.
Catch For Us The Foxes (2004)

Life

“As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we'd thought were obsolete. The egalitarian pretenses of the high-octane decades had dissolved and nobody even debated it anymore, including the women of our town. A plain majority of the townspeople were laborers now, whatever in life they had been before. Nobody in town called them peasants, but in a effect that's what they'd become. That's just the way things were.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 21, p. 101

Life, Women, World, Way

“I went to Ithaca, found the Grateful Dead and my life was changed.”

David Boreanaz (1969) American actor, famous for Angel and Buffy

Interview with a vampire By Chuck Holliday http://www.ithaca.edu/ithacan/articles/9902/04/accent/boreanaz.html

Life, Dead

“I very firmly believe that what unites America today is infinitely more important than those things which divide us. We are united Americans — North, East, West, and South, both parties — in our desire for peace, peace with honor, the kind of a peace that will last, and we are moving swiftly toward that great goal, not just in Vietnam, but a new era of peace in which the old relationships between the two super powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, and between the world's most populous nation, the People's Republic of China, and the United States, are changed so that we are on the eve of what could be the greatest generation of peace, true peace for the whole world, that man has ever known.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Remarks on Being Reelected (1972)

People, World, Peace

“The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change in the economic structure of the country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection, ever condemned capitalist society.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, I am Prepared to Die (1964)

History, Country

“I think it's pretty ridiculous to sit back and think that we've changed the horse so much, without realizing that they have changed us an awful lot too.”

Hank Green (1980) American vlogger

Thoughts from Places: On a Horse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAs_TvM3eKM Youtube

Thinking, Horse

“I’m pretty serious about what I’m doing. I’m not as unapproachable as many would say and I’m not as grumpy (as they would say), (but I get) a little frustrated sometimes with the lobbyists and bureaucrats, (and) if they’d let us do our jobs we’d be a lot better off. I’m a little older than most in this building, and with social media this whole thing has changed. We’ve got so many (Senate) members that are glued to their phones and the perception of what people are saying about them, rather than just doing their business and their job. I’m walking down the hallway and I get a few people run into me because they’re too busy looking on their cell phones, and I’ll chastise them and tell them to pay attention to what you’re doing.”

Ron Richard (1947) American politician

Ron Richard denies being a ‘grumpy old man,’ but says he’s serious about running the Missouri Senate http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/ron-richard-denies-being-grumpy-old-man-says-he-s-serious-about-running-missouri-senate#stream/0 (January 4, 2016)

People, Business

“It was in these wounded days the beginning of the man he would grow to be. He bore his pain and endured his wound as if a sign he too had been blooded by the madness that’d taken ahold of the land. He no longer shied from people, from the lone riders, from the reenslaved herded South. He no longer feared their presence on the roads and his conversion was believable to him. He had lived and did not die. He was breathing. Still, it was only the beginning and he was not old enough to know these changes, did not even know enough to think this way yet.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Coal Black Horse (2007)

Pain, People, Fear, Way

“Doubts about the existence of free will and individuals are nothing new, of course. More than 2,000 years ago thinkers in India, China and Greece argued that ‘the individual self is an illusion’. Yet such doubts don’t really change history much unless they have a practical impact on economics, politics and day-to-day life. Humans are masters of cognitive dissonance, and we allow ourselves to believe one thing in the laboratory and an altogether different thing in the courthouse or in parliament. Just as Christianity didn’t disappear the day Darwin published On the Origin of Species, so liberalism won’t vanish just because scientists have reached the conclusion that there are no free individuals.”

Yuval Noah Harari book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Life, History

“In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Life, Happiness, Question, Heart

“Technological change is beneficial only when other jobs replace the ones lost.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Guardian Weekly, August 08, 1993

“Certainly we tend to be resistant to change, on the whole, but that is because we have learned the hard way that change for its own sake is not a good idea, and that if something works more or less satisfactorily, it is best not to alter it without long and careful thought.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Source: The Light's On At Signpost (2002), p. xx.

Way, Idea, Learning

“People are reading news for free on the web, that's got to change.”

Rupert Murdoch (1931) Australian-American media mogul

Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/murdoch-says-go.html

People, Reading

“The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like heathcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007) Probably derived from older version:
2000s

Way, Idea, Madness

“Change comes in various wavelengths. There are changes in the game, changes in the rules of the game, and changes in how the rules are changed.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Game

“My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the very nature of each experience. I.... merely try to find a color that will fit my sensation. There is an impelling proportion of tones that can induce me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when every part has found its definite relationship, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to paint it all over again.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 412

Color, Feeling, Nature, Parting

“An attempt to improve intergroup relations has to face a wide variety of tasks. It deals with problems of attitude and stereotypes in regard to other groups and to one's own group, with problems of development of attitudes and conduct during childhood and adolescence, with problems of housing, and the change of the legal structure of the community; it deals with problems of status and caste, with problems of economic discrimination, with political leadership and with leadership in many aspects of community life. It deals with the small social body of a family, a club or a friendship group, with the larger social body of a school or a school system, with neighborhoods and with social bodies of the size of a community, of the state, a nation and with international problems.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Action research and minority problems, 1946, p. 36.

Life, Friendship, School, Family

“The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change. … A proposed policy change with low support among economically-elite Americans (one out of five in favor) is adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change with high support (four out of five in favor) is adopted about 45 percent of the time.”

Benjamin Page (1939) Professor of Decision Making

Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens," Perspectives on Politics, vol. 12, no. 3 (September 2014), p. 572

Support, Time

“Christine O'Donnell: I think especially in such an unstable economic environment, what people criticized him for in 2008 — his consistency, the fact that he was so strong, and — I think people will find that appealing going into the 2012.
Carol Costello: Well, some people say Mitt Romney isn't the most consistent candidate, because he's changed his minds about big, important issues over the years.
Christine O'Donnell: You know, that's one of the things that I like about him — because he's been consistent since he changed his mind.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

CNN, 2011-12-14, quoted in * 2011-12-14
Christine O’Donnell: I like Mitt Romney's flip
MJ
Lee
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70418.html
2011-12-15
about Mitt Romney
TV appearances

People, Thinking, Strong

“The structure of the nobility is changed along with that of the state, but it preserves its continuity with the past intact. Knighthood, on the other hand, as the exclusive warrior-class and upholder of secular culture, decays completely. The process is protracted and the ideals of chivalry do not lose their alluring splendour from one day to the next—least of all in the eyes of the middle classes. But behind the scenes everything is set for the fall of Don Quixote.—The decline of the knighthood has been connected with the new methods of warfare introduced in the late Middle Ages, and it has been pointed out that the heavily accoutred cavalry suffered a severe reverse whenever they met the infantry of the new mercenary armies or the foot of the peasant brigades.”

Arnold Hauser (1892–1978) Hungarian art historian

The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages

Age, Suffering, Past

“I don't want to change my music, but I like to play around with my style of music. I've always been a big fan of guitars. The beats are still quite hard and the riffs are still Basshunter, but I wanted to do something special. The lyrics are from a true story as well. It's based on me dating a girl who I thought was the one, but it didn't work out. I woke up one morning and she was doing something in the kitchen and then came through with a cup of coffee for me. I just went, 'Wow! I have to write a song now!”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

Bass Generation

Music, Girl, Coffee

“The resurrection state is the culmination of glorified humanity; is the change of the earthly for the heavenly; is the putting off of flesh and blood, and the putting on of the spiritual body. The body of the resurrection is the body with which the spirit is clothed for its celestial life.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 519.

Life, Clothes

“I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849 (August 30, 2017) 2017

God

“We used to think of cow's milk as a nearly perfect food. However, over the past several years, researchers have found new information that has caused many of us to change our opinion. This has provoked a lot of understandable controversy, but I have come to believe that cow's milk is not necessary for children. First, it turns out that the fat in cow's milk is not the kind of fat ("essential fatty acids") needed for brain development. Instead, milk fat is too rich in the saturated fats that promote artery blockages. Also, cow's milk can make it harder for a child to stay in iron balance. Milk is extremely low in iron and slows down iron absorption. It can also cause subtle blood loss in the digestive tract that causes the child to lose iron. … Some children have sensitivities to milk proteins, which show up as ear problems, respiratory problems, or skin conditions. Milk also has traces of antibiotics, estrogens, and other things a child does not need. There is, of course, nothing wrong with human breast milk — it is perfect for infants. For older children, there are many good soy and rice milk products and even nondairy "ice creams" that are well worth trying. If you are using cow's milk in your family, I would encourage you to give these alternatives a try.”

Benjamin Spock (1903–1998) American pediatrician and author of Baby and Child Care

Source: Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945), Seventh edition (1998), p. 346

Children, Family, Food, Understanding

“Do you expect teachers to draw on the blackboard, how to wear a condom? This would be surely embarrassing to our teachers. The curriculum must be changed to suit Indian conditions.”

Prakash Javadekar (1951) Indian politician

On a new sex education course, as quoted in " Sex education runs into trouble http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6949714.stm", BBC News (22 August 2007)

Teachers, Drawing

“The people of South Africa have spoken in these elections. They want change! And change is what they will get. Our plan is to create jobs, promote peace and reconciliation, and to guarantee freedom for all South Africans.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Inaugural speech (1994)

People, Peace, Freedom

“The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions…. You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you’re not going to change each other’s minds. It’s a waste of your time and my time.”

Barbara Bush (1925–2018) former First Lady of the United States

On the abortion debate, in which her stance was the opposite of her husband's, as quoted in TIME magazine (24 August 1992)

Time, Personality

“I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands
Make a kinder place.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

With My Own Two Hands.
Song lyrics, Diamonds on the Inside (2003)

World

“That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different it's course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for the moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”

Charles Dickens book Great Expectations

Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 9

Life, Imagination, Flowers, Thinking

“The impressions received by the two observers A0 and A would be alike in all respects. It would be impossible to decide which of them moves or stands still with respect to the ether, and there would be no reason for preferring the times and lengths measured by the one to those determined by the other, nor for saying that either of them is in possession of the "true" times or the "true" lengths. This is a point which Einstein has laid particular stress on, in a theory in which he starts from what he calls the principle of relativity, i. e., the principle that the equations by means of which physical phenomena may be described are not altered in form when we change the axes of coordinates for others having a uniform motion of translation relatively to the original system.
I cannot speak here of the many highly interesting applications which Einstein has made of this principle. His results concerning electromagnetic and optical phenomena …agree in the main with those which we have obtained… the chief difference being that Einstein simply postulates what we have deduced, with some difficulty and not altogether satisfactorily, from the fundamental equations of the electromagnetic field. By doing so, he may certainly take credit for making us see in the negative result of experiments like those of Michelson, Rayleigh and Brace, not a fortuitous compensation of opposing effects, but the manifestation of a general and fundamental principle.
Yet, I think, something may also be claimed in favour of the form in which I have presented the theory. I cannot but regard the ether, which can be the seat of an electromagnetic field with its energy and vibrations, as endowed with a certain degree of substantiality, however different it may be from all ordinary matter. …it seems natural not to assume at starting that it can never make any difference whether a body moves through the ether or not, and to measure distances and lengths of time by means of rods and clocks having a fixed position relatively to the ether.
It would be unjust not to add that, besides the fascinating boldness of its starting point, Einstein's theory has another marked advantage over mine. Whereas I have not been able to obtain for the equations referred to moving axes exactly the same form as for those which apply to a stationary system, Einstein has accomplished this by means of a system of new variables slightly different from those which I have introduced.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Source: The Theory of Electrons and Its Applications to the Phenomena of Light and Radiant Heat (1916), Ch. V Optical Phenomena in Moving Bodies.

Nature, Thinking, Time

“The fight against climate change is by far the most significant struggle of our times.”

Emmanuel Macron (1977) 25th President of the French Republic

Cited in: Damian Carrington, "Climate change will determine humanity's destiny, says Angela Merkel" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/climate-change-will-determine-humanitys-destiny-says-angela-merkel, The Guardian, 15 November 2017 (page visited on 15 November 2017). United Nations Climate Change Conference (2017)

Time, Fight

“A main problem in the study of organizational change is that the environmental contexts in which organizations exist are themselves changing, at an increasing rate and towards increasing complexity. This point, in itself, scarcely needs laboring. Nevertheless, characteristics of organizational environments demand consideration for their own sake if there is to be an advancement of understanding in the behavioral sciences of a great deal that is taking place under the impact of technological change, especially at the present time”

Fred Emery (1925–1997) Australian psychologist

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 21.

Behavior, Understanding, Problem, Study

“More and more parents are coming to realize their children are suffering at the hands of a system built to strangle any reform, any innovation, or any change.... This realization is becoming more evident as the momentum builds for an education revolution.”

Betsy DeVos (1958) 11th United States Secretary of Education

From remarks at the American Federation of Children made in May of 2016, as quoted in "Betsy DeVos, the (Relatively Mainstream) Reformer," by Michael McShane, EducationNext (2017), Volume 17 (No. 3). http://educationnext.org/betsy-devos-relatively-mainstream-reformer-education-secretary/#.WJo0Cp2xCzE.twitter

Children, Education, Parent, Suffering

“That was what drew him to mathematics. Not because it was rarefied, but because it probed to the subtle, deeper reality. People said that mathematicians were unworldly, and yammered on about how Einstein couldn’t make correct change. Nonsense. Einstein just didn’t give a damn. It was the subtle, the beautiful that concerned him.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 76)
Artifact (1985)

People, Beauty, Mathematics, Reality

“Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in. It's change you can Xerox.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Charging Barack Obama with plagiarism at Texas presidential debate, February 21, 2008 http://www.time.com/time/quotes/0,26174,1715473,00.html; see relevant quote above, two days earlier Presidential campaign (January 20, 2007 – 2008)

“Biological evolution is a system of constant divergence without subsequent joining of branches. Lineages, once distinct, are separate forever. In human history, transmission across lineages is, perhaps, the major source of cultural change. Europeans learned about corn and potatoes from Native Americans and gave them smallpox in return.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"The Panda's Thumb of Technology", p. 65
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

History, Learning

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Way

“The Wahabis, followers of a fanatical Moslem heresy, had imposed their strict rules on easy and civilized Kasim. In Kasim there was but little coffee-hospitality, much prayer and fasting, no tobacco, no artistic dalliance with women, no silk clothes, no gold and silver head-ropes or ornaments. Everything was forcibly pious or forcibly puritanical.
It was a natural phenomenon, this periodic rise at intervals of little more than a century, of ascetic creeds in Central Arabia. Always the votaries found their neighbours' beliefs cluttered with inessential things, which became impious in the hot imagination of their preachers. Again and again they had arisen, had taken possession, soul and body, of the tribes, and had dashed themselves to pieces on the urban Semites, merchants and concupiscent men of the world. About their comfortable possessions the new creeds ebbed and flowed like the tides or the changing seasons, each movement with the seeds of early death in its excess of Tightness. Doubtless they must recur so long as the causes — sun, moon, wind, acting in the emptiness of open spaces, weigh without check on the unhurried and uncumbered minds of the desert-dwellers.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 24

Death, Women, Men, World

“The New Deal is a phase of the transition process from capitalism to managerial society. The New Deal is not Stalinism and not Nazism. But no candid observer, friend or enemy of the New Deal, can deny that in terms of economic, social, political, ideological changes from traditional capitalism, the New Deal moves in the same direction as Stalinism and Nazism.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 203, as cited in: Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 13

“We wouldn't attempt to meditate, or engage in any other contemplative practice, if we didn't feel that something about our experience needed to be improved. But here lies one of the central paradoxes of spiritual life, because this very feeling of dissatisfaction causes us to overlook the intrinsic freedom of consciousness in the present. As we have seen, there are good reasons to believe that adopting a practice like meditation can lead to positive changes in one's life. But the deepest goal of spirituality is freedom from the illusion of the self—and to seek such freedom, as though it were a future state to be attained through effort, is to reinforce the chains of one's apparent bondage in each moment.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), Ch. 4

Life, Feeling, Effort, Freedom

“Understand once again that the time of changes of continents is approaching. Maitreya is coming, in the vanguard of science, addressing its new frontiers. All the problems of science and of the evolution of all that exists are of concern to the Teacher.”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 344
Agni Yoga (1929)

Understanding, Problem, Teachers, Science

“Therefore we should not try to alter circumstances but to adapt ourselves to them as they really are, just as sailors do. They don't try to change the winds or the sea but ensure that they are always ready to adapt themselves to conditions. In a flat calm they use the oars; with a following breeze they hoist full sail; in a head wind they shorten sail or heave to. Adapt yourself to circumstances in the same way.”

Bion of Borysthenes (-325–-246 BC) ancient greek philosopher

As quoted by Teles of Megara, fr. 2, On Self-Sufficiency

Way, Sea

“We used to laugh a lot
But only because we thought
That everything good always would remain
Nothing's gonna change there's no need to complain.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Mudfootball.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

“Because let’s be honest about this — is there any law New Atheists can point to that has been their political output? That has changed due to their activism? What has it done? It sells books, it makes for great polemics, it keeps journalists busy, but there has been no political accomplishment.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/professor-jacques-berlinerblau-tells-atheists-stop-whining/2012/09/14/0fdaf7f4-feab-11e1-98c6-ec0a0a93f8eb_story.html?utm_term=.6145b4fb44a8 "Professor Jacques Berlinerblau tells atheists: Stop whining!"

Books, Law, Business

“An opportunity for cybernetics to change the course of the philosophy of mind was missed when intentionality was misinterpreted as "the providing of coded knowledge."”

Igor Aleksander (1937) scientist

Aleksander (2001) in: New scientist. Vol. 169. p.56 cited in: Jacques Vallée (2003) The Heart of the Internet. p.8

Knowledge

“This is the time to remember
'Cause it will not last forever.
These are the days to hold on to
'Cause we won't, although we'll want to.
This is the time,
But time is gonna change.
You've given me the best of you
But now I need the rest of you.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

This Is the Time.
Song lyrics, The Bridge (1986)

Time

“The dalit's main agenda is not reservations. My way of equality is English education. Even if 10% of our children got English education, the intellectual field would have changed. This country would have changed. My hope is education, not reservation — and I emphasize, English education”

Kancha Ilaiah (1952) Indian scholar, activist and writer

Quoted in at The Times Of India (15 February 2013) http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/interviews/Kancha-Ilaiah-Even-if-10-dalit-children-got-English-education-India-would-change/articleshow/18503625.cms.

Children, Education, Hope, Way

“Our military and our nation are entering another period of consequences – a time of rapid change and momentous choices.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)

Time

“Social change will be viewed as a push-pull process in which a Society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind by its realized past.”

Fred Polak (1907–1985) Dutch futurologist

Source: The Image of the Future, 1973, p. 1 (as cited in: H.C. Marais (1988) South Africa: perspectives on the future. p. 15)

Past, Future

“If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion, one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them information about the source and origin of the universe, it assures them of protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and it guides their thoughts and motions by means of precepts which are backed by the whole force of its authority.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

A Philosophy of Life (Lecture 35) 1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Life, Men, Happiness, Religion

“Certain truths about human beings have never changed. We are tribal creatures in our very DNA; we have an instinctive preference for our own over others, for “in-groups” over “out-groups”; for hunter-gatherers, recognizing strangers as threats was a matter of life and death. We also invent myths and stories to give meaning to our common lives. Among those myths is the nation — stretching from the past into the future, providing meaning to our common lives in a way nothing else can. Strip those narratives away, or transform them too quickly, and humans will become disoriented. Most of us respond to radical changes in our lives, especially changes we haven’t chosen, with more fear than hope. We can numb the pain with legal cannabis or opioids, but it is pain nonetheless.
If we ignore these deeper facts about ourselves, we run the risk of fatal errors. It’s vital to remember that multicultural, multiracial, post-national societies are extremely new for the human species, and keeping them viable and stable is a massive challenge.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

The Reactionary Temptation (2017)

Life, Death, Pain, Truth

“There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Source: 1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Hope

“One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

"Footprints in the Dust", p. 19
Memory and Dream (1994)

World

“Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth, he can do with it as he please. And if things don't change soon, he will.”

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

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), License to Kill

Thinking

“It's funny how many times in life I've found myself rolling full steam ahead toward something I was sure I'd never do. Whatever might happen in life, whether I liked it or didn't like it, I could know one thing for sure: it would change. There was absolute certainty in uncertainty, in some ways an enormous comfort.”

Steph Davis (1973) American rock climber

Learning to Fly: A Memoir of Hanging On and Letting Go (New York: Touchstone, 2015), pp. 83 https://books.google.it/books?id=IIDRCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA83-84.

Life, Way, Time

“I always enjoyed horror, both as a kid and as a young man. Then when I was doing stunts in horror movies and was lucky enough to get the role as Jason the first time then that’s when everything changed. Once you get known in horror then every small horror film wants you to be in their movie because your name is known in the horror genre and that helps sell the movie. Very often, if they’re smart, they will offer you different kind of roles which I personally love. When somebody offers me something that I’ve never done before, that’s what I’m looking for.”

Kane Hodder (1955) Horror film actor

Interview: Kane Hodder Talks Stunt Work, Acting and His Career in Horror http://www.geekchicelite.com/interview-kane-hodder-talks-stunt-work-acting-and-his-career-in-horror/ (September 10, 2015)

Love, Time, Help, Personality

“Vainly you talk about voting it down. When you have cast your millions of ballots, you have not reached the evil. It has fastened its root deep into the heart of the nation, and nothing but God’s truth and love can cleanse the land. We must change the moral sentiment.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (October 22, 1847), Delivered at Market Hall, New York City, New York.
1840s, Love of God, Love of Man, Love of Country (1847)

Love, God, Truth, Evil

“A fifty-seven-year-old college professor expressed it this way: "Yes, there's a need for male lib and hardly anyone writes about it the way it really is, though a few make jokes. My gut reaction, which is what you asked for, is that men—the famous male chauvinist pigs who neglect their wives, underpay their women employees, and rule the world—are literally slaves. They're out there picking that cotton, sweating, swearing, taking lashes from the boss, working fifty hours a week to support themselves and the plantation, only then to come back to the house to do another twenty hours a week rinsing dishes, toting trash bags, writing checks, and acting as butlers at the parties. It's true of young husbands and middleaged husbands. Young bachelors may have a nice deal for a couple of years after graduating, but I've forgotten, and I'll never again be young! Old men. Some have it sweet, some have it sour."Man's role—how has it affected my life? At thirty-five, I chose to emphasize family togetherness and income and neglect my profession if necessary. At fifty-seven, I see no reward for time spent with and for the family, in terms of love or appreciation. I see a thousand punishments for neglecting my profession. I'm just tired and have come close to just walking away from it and starting over; just research, publish, teach, administer, play tennis, and travel. Why haven't I? Guilt. And love. And fear of loneliness. How should the man's role in my family change? I really don't know how it can, but I'd like a lot more time to do my thing."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

In Harness: The Male Condition, pp. 6–7
The Hazards of Being Male (1976)

Love, Life, Women, Men

Quotes about change page 48

Quotes about change
page 48