Quotes about change
page 54

“You know that weird cat dance that cats do late at night where they go completely stir-crazy and they run around the apartment and you don't know what the hell they're doing? I often feel like that. I dye my hair constantly because I can't sit still with one hair color. That's a perfect example of trying to satisfy some hunger. I want change; I want constant stimuli. I love to fly because I love the high. All of these are like itch kind of things. Sometimes I need to completely get away. I'll get in the car and I'll drive for as long as I can drive. Sometimes it's a sexual urge. I don't need to explain that; it's pretty self-explanatory. It's a craving, a desire. Sometimes it's food. I'm just a giant, big ol' consumer. I want, I need, I crave, I can't say no. I have no control and I'm a complete control freak. It's just crazy”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

laughs
Asked where her "itches" come from
Attributed

Love, Hunger, Food, Cars

“Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the tablets of eternity.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

James Anthony Froude, in the lecture "The Science of History" (5 February 1864); published in Representative Essays (1885) by George Haven Putnam, p. 274; Lord Acton quoted Froude in an address "The Study of History" (11 June 1895) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1906acton.html, which led to this being widely attributed to him. The phrase has also sometimes been misquoted as: Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral laws are written on the table of eternity. Misattributed

Law

“Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality … Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

"I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!
Introduction, Nothing But the Girl, 1996 ISBN 186047005X.

Hate, Religion, Nature

“I remember that they had this wonderful effect for my demise [on 2020: Texas Gladiators], with my skull being cracked open by an axe. They had photos of this stunning effect made, but then decided to change it because they thought it was just too much.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Photo

“These changes are part of what keeps me interested and excited. Life won't let me keep coming at it from the same angle.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Life, Parting

“If the economy of today were operating close to capacity levels with little unemployment, or if a sudden change in our military requirements should cause a scramble for men and resources, then I would oppose tax reductions as irresponsible and inflationary; and I would not hesitate to recommend a tax increase if that were necessary.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)" (14 December 1962)
1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)

Men

“Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 244; Cited in: Michael J. Katz (1986) Templets and the Explanation of Complex Patterns, p. 123

Knowledge, Perfection

“The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable. Why now? Because the change is also exponential — small differences of yesterday can have suddenly shocking consequences tomorrow.”

Nicholas Negroponte book Being Digital

Being Digital (1995)

“One dream can change the development of a personality, and change his physical course.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 47
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 2

Dreams, Personality

“the circle of politicians which surrounded him--flatterers, eventual profiteers, chaged ideas and convictions like changing a shirt, followed the expediency of the moment. p245”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

Idea

“The central idea of quantum theory is that energy, like matter, is not continuous but it exists only in discrete packets. Discreteness of matter and charge on the microscopic scale seems entirely reasonable and familiar to us, based on the modern picture of atomic structure. But, the idea that energy also exists only in discrete chunks is contrary to our experience of the macroscopic world. The motions of a soccer ball rolling up and down the sides of a gully involve arbitrary amounts of kinetic and potential energy; nothing in ordinary human experience suggests that the energy of a system should change abruptly by “jumps.” Understanding quantum mechanics requires that we develop a new kind of physical intuition, based on the results of experiments that are impossible to understand using classical mechanics. These results are completely divorced from ordinary human experience in the macroscopic world around us, and our physical intuition from the macroscopic world cannot be transferred to the quantum domain. We must resist the urge to interpret these quantum results in terms of ordinary experience.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 4 : Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

World, Idea, Understanding

“The tragic situation of the modern liberalised Christian mind is just that. Having accepted with fervour the moral ideal as the Divine ideal, it still remains in bondage to the old mechanical conception of the great Divine operations called Regeneration and Creation. These it still thinks, at bottom, under the category of efficient causality. It takes their names literally, in accordance with the etymology, and thus the names themselves help the evil cause of prolonging conceptions that are hostile to the dearest insights of the moral spirit quickened in the school of Christ. Eminently is this true in the case of creation, into the current conception of which, so far as I can see, there as yet enters no gleam of the change that must be made if our relations to God in the basis of existence are to be stated consistently with the independence we must have of him in the moral world. This lack of a moral apprehension of creation is as characteristic, too, of historic philosophy as it is of historic theology, or even of ordinary opinion.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.342-3

God, Hostility, World, School

“Regarding my childhood, my grandmother could play by ear and she loved to hear me practice and would say after every piece, "That was pretty. Play that one again." She was a booster. I had two women piano teachers who encouraged me to compose--Margie Murphy and Helen Lipscomb. Helen was also a composer and we used part of my lessons for composition.
When I was in high school, I read John Cage's books and fell in love with the ideas and the excitement of the avant garde. My music, as a result, moved over to what has been called post-Cagian, non-academic. That lasted until about 1979 at which point I changed. My music is now quite lyrical, sometimes called neo-Romantic, and full of cut-ups/collage of newly composed materials. Since 1985 I have been composing mostly swales for various instrumental combinations.
A swale is a meadow or a marsh where there is nourishment and moisture and therefore, a rich diversity of plant life. My work, since 1984, has been made from swatches (of newly composed music, rather than found music) which are reminiscent of this diversity…”

Beth Anderson (1950) American neo-romantic composer

Anderson (1996-2011) "Beth Anderson, Composer, Miscellany From The Dark Past" at beand.com http://www.beand.com/, Last Updated January 3, 2011

Love, Life, Women, Books

“There haven’t been fundamental structural changes in America. There’s been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1950) American professor

Interview with The Root, July 21, 2009.

People, World, Housing

“The light through the stained glass was cobalt and red.
And the frayed cuffs and collars were mended by halos of golden thread.
The choir sang, "Once Upon a Time There Was An Ocean."
And all the old hymns and family names came fluttering down as leaves of emotion.
As nothing is different, but everything's changed.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean
Song lyrics, Surprise (2006)

Family, Light, Time

“The studious and good and true, never suffer their minds to be warped by the passions of hatred and envy, which unfit men duly to weigh the arguments that are advanced in behalf of truth, or to appreciate the proposition that is even fairly demonstrated. Neither do they think it unworthy of them to change their opinion if truth and undoubted demonstration require them to do so. They do not esteem it discreditable to desert error, though sanctioned by the highest antiquity, for they know full well that to err, to be deceived, is human; that many things are discovered by accident and that many may be learned indifferently from any quarter, by an old man from a youth, by a person of understanding from one of inferior capacity.”

William Harvey (1578–1657) English physician

"Dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians".
De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (1628)

Men, Truth, Youth, Error

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

World, Lying, Idea

“Sky, not spirit, do they change, those who cross the sea.”
Caelum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt.

Horace book Epistles

Book I, epistle xi, line 27
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Sea

“August olst. Camp Tiverton. I wrote the foregoing, and intended to have sent it by the express that went off in the morning, but while I was writing, I was informed the express was gone; and the change of situation and round of events that have since taken place, have prevented my forwarding what I had wrote, as matters seemed to be coming to a crisis.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

“We begin with the people and they have to define the position. So relationships first, then build power among those people where they agree. So, based on support for thing like regional banks, interest rate cap, living wage, a very, very different kind of agenda. The words we don’t use much are equality, diversity, accessibility, inclusivity, because that’s not where people are. We work on living wage, anti-usury, regional banks, vocational colleges, workers on boards. And it’s a real change in the way that the party works.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

On the community organising agenda of Blue Labour, Interview with Australian Fabians: http://www.fabians.org.au/interview_with_maurice_glasman

People, Way, Support

“We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), XIII. Progress Through Revolutions, p. 170

Truth, Learning

“During my high school years, a boy from my neighborhood named Malcolm chose me to be his friend for a season. His elbow nudged my book in the public library one Saturday afternoon as he sprawled forward across the table feigning some condition—boredom, I suppose. His voice was like shadow—as whispery and as indistinct as shadow, due to an adolescent change. “Do you want to wrestle?” he asked. I have never met anyone since who speaks as Malcolm spoke: He daydreamed; he pronounced strategies out loud (as I raked elm leaves from our lawn and piled them in the curb)—about how he would befriend this boy or that boy, never anyone I knew; Malcolm went to a different high school. “First,” he said, “I will tease him about his freckles. Then I will tease him about his laugh—how his laugh sounds a little like a whinny sometimes. I won’t go too far. You should see how his wrist pivots as he dribbles down the court. “He’s got these little curls above his sideburns. I wish I had those.””

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

(He would catch me up on the way to the library.) “What are you reading? We read that last year. Not really a war story, though, is it? Want to go eat French toast?”
Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

War, Books, School, Way

“Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199704251604.JAA27300@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Stupidity, Thinking

“If you depend on the widespread lover's delusion, 'With my love he or she will change,' you have little chance to help yourself. This delusion is external control to the maximum. If things are not good from the beginning, they are very likely to change, but not for the better.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 105

Love, Lovers, Chance, Help

“To know that we are measuring real change we need to have a strong theoretical base.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman, (1970) in: Systems and management annual. Vol 1, p. 338
1960s - 1970s

Strong

“The content of a book holds the power of education and it is with this power that we can shape our future and change lives.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

Inauguration of Library of Birmingham, Jan 2013

Books, Education, Future

“After two years of study, I'm happy to tell you that dire projections about declines in the U. S. work force due to technological change are exaggerated at best.”

Richard Cyert (1921–1998) American economist

Richard Cyert, cited in: Data Center's Plant Shutdowns Monitor. (1987), p. 4

Happiness, Study

“The relationship between Scotland and the UK and that between the ROC-Taiwan and (Mainland China) are totally different. The ROC is an independent country, so the question of announcing independence via referendum is simply a nonstarter. Any kind of referendum that aims to change the status quo would be unwise. Keeping the ROC on Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state is our topmost priority. Any idea diverging from this would be at odds with the Constitution and against our citizens’ interests.”

Jiang Yi-huah (1960) Taiwanese politician

Jiang Yi-huah (2014) cited in " ROC not Scotland, independence vote not needed: Jiang http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2014/09/17/2003599885" on Taipei Times, 17 September 2014

Idea, Question, Country

“Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you — externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.”

Timothy Leary book Flashbacks

Flashbacks (1983)

World, Way, Personality

“The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW(4:19 p.m. December 2, 2009).
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

World

“Is there anything more terrible than perpetual motion, than doing and doing and doing, without a reason, without a consciousness, without a change, without an end?”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

“Instantly you should awaken, walk in the right way, keep aloof from all abomination and idolatry, forsake false prophets, preachers and priests; and seek the true teachers, sacraments and divine service; for a true, sincere, Christian faith cannot be idle; but it changes, renews, purifies, sanctifies and justifies more and more; it makes joyous and glad, for by faith it knows that hell, devil, sin and death, are conquered through Christ, and that grace, mercy, and redemption from sin and eternal life, are acquired through him.”

Menno Simons (1496–1561) Dutch theologian, founder of the Mennonites

Ibid, p.157

Life, Death, Faith, Way

“All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

IX, 19
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book IX

Art, Universe

“The #1 change in Silicon Valley is information density. If you think about it, 30 years ago the only way you got info was during one-on-one meetings. You knew very little and the world knew very little. We just know a lot more now.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

World, Way, Thinking

“The planet is fine. The people are [bleeped out]. Because everyone is trying to save the planet. The planet doesn’t need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish. And that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live. They don't care about the planet in theory. They just care about having a comfortable place. And these people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild, they put nature to the test and they get what's coming to them. That's what I say. That's what's happening, and I can't wait for the sea levels to rise. I can't wait for some of these cities to disappear. There are places that are going to go away. The map is going to change and that's because -- people think nature is outside of them. They don't take into them the idea that we are part of it. They say, "oh, we're going for a nature walk. We're going to the country because we like nature." Nature is in here. [points to chest] And if you're in tune with it, like the Indians, the Hopis, especially, the balance of life, the balance, the harmony of nature, if you understand that, you don't overbuild. You don’t do all this moron stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The View, 24 October 2007 http://newsbusters.org/blogs/justin-mccarthy/2007/10/24/george-carlins-view-wildfire-victims-get-whats-coming-them Interviews, Television Appearances

Life, People, Idea, Understanding

“Wherever there exists a difference of temperature… it is possible to have also the production of impelling power. …All substances in nature can be employed for this purpose, all are susceptible of changes of volume, of successive contractions and dilatations, through the alternation of heat and cold. All are capable of overcoming in their changes of volume certain resistances… A solid… A liquid… An aeriform fluid… If it is enclosed in an expansible space, such as a cylinder provided with a piston, it will produce movements of great extent. Vapors of all substances capable of passing into a gaseous condition, as of alcohol, of mercury, of sulphur, etc., may fulfil the same office as vapor of water. …Most of these… have been proposed, many even have been tried, although… without remarkable success.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Nature, Water, Success

“When was the last time you looked at anything, solely, and concentratedly, and for its own sake? Ordinary life passes in a near blur. If we go to the theatre or the cinema, the images before us change constantly, and there is the distraction of language. Our loved ones are so well known to us that there is no need to look at them, and one of the gentle jokes of married life is that we do not.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Art Objects (1995)

Love, Life, Time

“It's a sort of infantile thing, painting. Paint in a sense is a certain infantile thing. I mean in the handling. I start out using a brush but then I can't take the time because the idea doesn't correspond, it gets stuck when the brush goes out of paint in a certain length of time. So I have to go back and by then I might have lost the rest of it. So I take my hand and I do it. Or I have those wonderful things that came in later: paint sticks... So I had to find things that I could use, like my hands or the paint sticks... And I did those charts, big palettes... two or three paintings with palettes and all of the colours – pink, flesh, brown, red for blood. And I think with most painters you can think and it can change very fast, the impetus of what something is. It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting, not as if you were painting an object or special things, but it's like coming through the nervous system. It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), p. 179

Feeling, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“It was the call of all those fortuities… which gave her the courage to leave home and change her fate.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 51
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body

Fate, Home, Courage

“There is still a Castro in [Cuba]. And I think the status quo will not change until [Fidel] moves to the great beyond. [However, ] Raul Castro [recently installed as president of Cuba] is a more open-minded guy [than Fidel]. [Raul] lives a more capaitalistic lifestyle. And he has been somewhat more open with the press and allowing the sudents to speak up. But the reality is that he won't do much until Fidel is gone.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

news.bostronherald.com (March 12, 2008)
2007, 2008

Guy, Thinking, Reality

“Before capitalist relations could come to dominate industrial production, a set of related changes was required to guarantee the new order. The state had to be transformed from a tributary structure to a structure of support for capitalist enterprise.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Part Three, Capitalism, p. 265.
Europe and the People Without History, 1982

Support

“The words nearly break my heart, and I feel something crumble inside me. The truth is often a terrible thing, and I wish again that I were someone else. But it is too late now, too late to change anything. I am old and alone and I'm dying a little more with each passing hour. I'm tired, more tired than I've ever been.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Ira Levinson, Chapter 5 Ira, p. 80
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)

Truth, Feeling, Heart

“The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta. Y'know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we're just fascinated by science fiction so and it's something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it's like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would.”

Cedric Bixler-Zavala (1974) American singer

Bixler-Zavala about the bandname The Mars Volta http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/The_Mars_Volta_-_Etymology_and_trivia/id/2070708

People, Books, Way, Science

“In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.”

Herbert A. Simon book Administrative Behavior

Source: 1940s-1950s, Administrative Behavior, 1947, p. 114.

“The Europe you know is changing. You have probably seen the landmarks. … But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. … It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration. All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighbourhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corner. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighbourhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

Women, Children, People, World

“I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. …I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn. That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1990s and later, Managing in a Time of Great Change (1995), p. 295

World, Education, Thinking, Learning

“Great entrepreneurs are revolutionaries. They speak truth to power. They change the status quo. They rebel against what exists. If you want to see what country will create the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, see how they treat their dissidents.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Truth, Country

“I waited for a busTo separate the both of usAnd take me off far away from you'Cause my feelings never change a bitI always feel like shitI don't know why; I guess that I "just do"”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

I Didn't Understand.
Lyrics, XO (1998)

Feeling, Waiting

“Slavery is a form of communism… The manner to which the change shall be made from the present form of society to that system of communism which we propose is very simple.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324

Communication

“I have always been interested in oval or ovoid shapes. The first carvings were simple realistic oval forms of the human head or of a bird. Gradually my interest grew in more abstract values – the weight, poise and curvature of the ovoid as a basic form. The carving and piercing of such a form seems to open up an infinite variety of continuous curves in the third dimension, changing in accordance with the contours of the original ovoid and with the degree of penetration of the material. Here is a sufficient field for exploration to last a lifetime..”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Source: 1932 - 1946, The Studio 132:643', (1946), p. 279

Bird

“The Emancipation Proclamation had four enduring results. First, it gave force to the executive power to change conditions in the national interest on a broad and far-reaching scale. Second, it dealt a devastating blow to the system of slaveholding and an economy built upon it, which had been muscular enough to engage in warfare on the Federal government. Third, it enabled the Negro to play a significant role in his own liberation with the ability to organize and to struggle, with less of the bestial retaliation his slave status had permitted to his masters. Fourth, it resurrected and restated the principle of equality upon which the founding of the nation rested.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

“If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today are whatever the majority decides they are that morning. What distinguishes an institution from a flash mob is that its rules endure. They can be changed, of course. But only by significant supermajorities. That’s why constitutional changes require two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of the states. If we could make constitutional changes by majority vote, there would be no Constitution. As of today, the Senate effectively has no rules. Congratulations, Harry Reid. Finally, something you will be remembered for.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2010s, 2013, The growing breakdown of political norms (2013)

Housing

“Empedocles tried to address the problem of change by saying that there is not one fundamental arche but four—earth, water, air, and fire—which generate all the material substances in nature by mixing together in various ways under the influence of forces he called Love and Strife.”

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 287

Love, Way, Nature, Problem

“The beat must not be like a tyrannical hammer, impeding or urging on, but must be to the music what the pulse-beat is to the life of man. There is no slow tempo in which passages do not occur that demand a quicker motion, so as to obviate the impression of dragging. Conversely there is no presto that does not need a quiet delivery by many places, so as not to throw away the chance of expressiveness by hurrying… Neither the quickening nor the slowing of the tempo should ever give the impression of the spasmodic or the violent. The changes, to have a musical-poetic significance, must come in an orderly way in periods and phrases, conditioned by the varying warmth of the expression. We have in music no signs for all this. They exist only in the sentient soul. If they are not there, then there is no help to be had from the metronome – which obviates only the grosser errors – nor from these extremely imperfect precepts of mine.”

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) German composer

quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Conductors (1981) ISBN 0671208349

Life, Music, Way, Error

“Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the United Nations (1963)

Men, World, Peace, Time

“To prevent the starving peasants from fleeing to the towns an internal passport system was introduced and unauthorized change of residence was made punishable with imprisonment. Peasants were not allowed passports at all, and were therefore tied to the soil as in the worst days of feudal serfdom: this state of things was not altered until the 1970s. The concentration camps filled with new hordes of prisoners sentenced to hard labour. The object of destroying the peasants’ independence and herding them into collective farms was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered, despite innumerable measures of reorganization and reform. At the time of Stalin’ s death, almost a quarter of a century after mass collectivization was initiated, the output of grain per head of population was still below the 1913 level; yet throughout this period, despite misery and starvation, large quantities of farm produce were exported all over the world for the sake of Soviet industry. The terror and oppression of those years cannot be expressed merely by the figures for loss of human life, enormous as these are; perhaps the most vivid picture of what collectivization meant is in Vasily Grossman’ s posthumous novel Forever Flowing.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 39
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Life, Death, World, Loss

“If one's son begins acting kind of gay, then when he is spanked he'll change his behavior.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

At the program Participação Popular on TV Câmara on 17 November 2010. Deputado federal defende na TV agressões físicas para mudar "filho gayzinho" http://www2.camara.leg.br/camaranoticias/noticias/DIREITOS-HUMANOS/151706-COMISSAO-VAI-DEBATER-DECLARACAO-DE-BOLSONARO-SOBRE-PUNICAO-A-FILHO-GAY.html. Folha de S.Paulo (25 November 2010).

Behavior

“The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain's self-confidence and for our standing in the world…We had come to be seen by both friends and enemies as a nation which lacked the will and the capability to defend its interests in peace, let alone in war. Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had. The war also had real importance in relations between East and West: years later I was told by a Russian general that the Soviets had been firmly convinced that we would not fight for the Falklands, and that if we did fight we would lose. We proved them wrong on both counts, and they did not forget the fact.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

The Downing Street Years (1993)

War, World, Peace, Confidence

“As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

World, Beauty, Understanding

“Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity?”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Life, Beauty, Parent

“The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor—not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Glow, Big Glowworm", p. 264
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Nature

“In America, where many peoples are held together largely by their sense of opportunities and their hope of reward, the subject is of the gravest concern. The attitude and reactions of the native-born American who believes in Americanization, and the one who does not, with all shades of opinion and of feeling lying between the two extremes, are to be considered. There is the man who comes here to stay and the one who in- tends to return. There is the racial solidarist bent upon reestablishing his own race here with as few changes as possible. There is the race which hates another, and for its own independent reasons tries to block its progress in the new land. We have to reckon with a situation created by men who are representatives of powerful foreign corporations, who will spend their lives here, make their homes here, and who never intend to become part of America. There are leaders who manipulate their people in the interest of the country of their origin, as well as those genuinely interested in serving America. In addition, there are factions in each race having no desire to unite with one another; there are races opposed to healing their own differences of centuries ago; and there are groups passionately devoted to their own culture and ideals, to which in their opinion nothing can compare.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Men, Hate, People, Hope

“Heat can evidently be a cause of motion only by virtue of the changes of volume or of form which it produces in bodies.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

“The objective of social change might concern the nutritional standard of consumption, the economic standard of living, the type of group relation, the output of a factory, the productivity of an educational team. It is important that a social standard to be changed does not have the nature of a “thing” but of a “process.””

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Source: 1940s, Quasi-Stationary Social Equilibria and the Problem of Permanent Change, 1947, p. 39.

Education, Nature

“Ziegler said, “You know the story in the Bible, the story of Abraham and Isaac?”
“Of course.”
“God instructs Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice. Isaac makes it as far as the chopping block before God changes his mind.”
Yes. Jacob had always imagined God a little appalled at Abraham’s willingness to cooperate.
Ziegler said, “What’s the moral of the story?”
“Faith.”
“Hardly,” Ziegler said. “Faith has nothing to do with it. Abraham never doubted the existence of God—how could he? The evidence was ample. His virtue wasn’t faith, it was fealty. He was so simplemindedly loyal that he would commit even this awful, terrible act. He was the perfect foot soldier. The ideal pawn. Abraham’s lesson: fealty is rewarded. Not morality. The fable makes morality contingent. Don’t go around killing innocent people, that is, unless you're absolutely certain God want you to. It’s a lunatic’s credo.
“Isaac, on the other hand, learns something much more interesting. He learns that neither God nor his own father can be trusted. Maybe it makes him a better man than Abraham. Suppose Isaac grows up and fathers a child of his own, and God approaches him and makes the same demand. One imagines Isaac saying, ’No. You can take him if you must, but I won’t slaughter my son for you.’ He’s not the good and faithful servant his father was. But he is, perhaps, a more wholesome human being.””

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

The Fields of Abraham (pp. 21-22)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

God, People, Faith, Imagination

“Madison has inserted in his amendments the increase of representatives, each State having two at least. The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people. Freedom of the press too. There is a prodigious great dose for a medicine. But it will stimulate the stomach as little as hasty pudding. It is rather food for physic. An immense mass of sweet and other herbs and roots for diet drink.”

Fisher Ames (1758–1808) American politician

Letter to F.R. Minoe, June 12, 1789, reported in Life and Work of Fisher Ames, vol. I, 52-54.

People, Food, Drink, Freedom

“Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the suppression of the old society by the new.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)

“Surplus matter. I'd forgotten all about that phrase, those classes—even before the accident, I mean. After the accident I forgot everything. It was as though my memories were pigeons and the accident a big noise that had scared them off. They fluttered back eventually—but when they did, their hierarchy had changed, and some that had had crappy places before ended up with better ones: I remembered them more clearly; they seemed more important.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 6.

Memory

“And it was this that awed him — the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time.”

Thomas Wolfe book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel (1929), p. 157

Life, Time, Speed

“A visionary leader seeks to empower others. They continue to search for truth while maintaining their principle-centered focus. Visionary leaders have a good balance between right-brain and leftbrain thinking. The right brain is more feminine, nurturing, intuitive and creative; the left-brain is more masculine and “physical,” interested more in results. Visionary leaders often produce a host of solutions for social, economic and other types of problems.
If we want visionary leaders, we must, of course, learn to recognize them and support them. Visionary leaders have great qualities, which they develop through their interest in values, intuition and partnership with others. They can bring spiritual culture to our religious and political lives. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “I must first be the change I want to see in my world.””

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

A visionary leader knows he must lead by example, and that his leadership will have a powerful impact on both present and future generations.
Ten Characteristics of a Servant-Leader
Books, Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness, Volume II: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times (Hari-Nama Press, 2001)

Truth, World, Search, Support

“Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations. Private property has not always existed. When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

Age

“All’s well that changes least.”

David H. Levy (1948) Canadian astronomer

Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)

“In the heart of the sphere of everything that keeps changing, there one thing that never changes—life. Life is the one thing that stays with me until the very end. Today, people may like me. Tomorrow, they may not. But my life is still there. It is not subject to good and bad. Human beings are the thinkers—homo sapiens—the ones with the brains. We can think about things, and in our thoughts, everything keeps changing. In our moods, everything keeps changing. Yet, in our beings, there is the heart, and the heart does not change because it is consistent with only one thing. Our needs on the outside change all the time, but the heart's need never changes. It is consistently the same, and always will be.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Hong Kong, China May 6, 1990
1990s

Life, People, Mood, Thinking

“Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.”

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

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 113

People

“Complexity theory began with an interest u how order spring from chaos. According to complexity theory, adaption is most effective in systems that are only partially connected. The argument is that too much structure creates gridlock, while too little structure creates chaos. A good example would be the traffic lights in a city. If there are no lights, traffic is chaotic. If there are too many lights, traffic stops. A moderate number of lights creates structure, but still allows drivers to adapt their routes in surprising ways in response to changing traffic conditions. Consequently, the key to effective change is to stay poised on this edge of chaos. Complexity theory focuses managerial thinking on the interrelationships among different parts of an organization and on the trade-off of less control for greater adaptation.”

Shona Brown (1960) businessperson

Source: Competing on the Edge, 1998, p. 14

Way, Spring, Thinking, Light

“I was supposed to wear this really great costume [on Il Brigante], beautiful white flannel trousers, a captain's cap, it looked marvellous, but right before shooting they had it changed and they told me to wear my own stuff instead. I felt rotten because it looked so cheap.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Beauty

“The Hindu pantheon has changed to some extent but the old Gods are still active and are still understood though under modified names. Hindu India has a sense of continuity with its past which other nations, that changed their religions at some later stage, lack. It is also known that the Hindu religion preserves many old layers and forms. Therefore, its study may link us not only with its own past forms but also with the religious consciousness, intuitions and forms that prevailed in the past in Europe, in Greece, in Rome, in many Scandinavian and Baltic countries, amongst Germanic and Slavic peoples and also in several countries of the Middle East. In short, the study may reveal a fundamental form of spiritual consciousness which is wider than its Hindu expression.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

The World As Revelation: Names of Gods (1980)

God, People, Religion, Sense

“To enter your Castle (soul) is not a journey that takes you away from the world; rather it brings you directly into the world. It brings you fully into your soul, and into your power in the world…Mystics change the world around them more dramatically and more positively than can ever be measured. The mystic works on the invisible plane, relying on God, prayer and grace.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Entering the Castle : An Inner Path to God and Your Soul (2007), p. 85

God, World, Soul

“Not a word of my writing has ever been changed by another person's hands, and I don't think many screenwriters can say that.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Ain't It Cool News interview

Thinking, Personality

“Isaac Newton’s Philosophae Naturalis Principia Mathematica abstracted time from events, establishing its tractability to scientific calculation. Conceived as pure, absolute duration, without qualities, it conforms perfectly to its mathematical idealization (as the real number line). Since time is already pure, its reality indistinguishable from its formalization, a pure mathematics of change – the calculus – can be applied to physical reality without obstruction. The calculus can exactly describe things as they occur in themselves, without straying, even infinitesimally, from the rigorous dictates of formal intelligence. In this way natural philosophy becomes modern science.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Time in Transition" https://web.archive.org/web/20121113235339/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/article/777/time-in-transition (2011) (original emphasis)

Way, Intelligence, Mathematics, Nature

“The significant point to be noted about the Syrian Christians, however, is their sudden change of colour as soon as the Portuguese arrived on the scene. They immediately rallied round the Portuguese and against their Hindu neighbours, and when the Portuguese started pressurizing the Hindu Rajas for extraterritorial rights so that their co-religionists could be “protected”, the Syrian Christians evinced great enthusiasm everywhere.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

“Any form of organization that cuts across normal bureaucratic lines to capture opportunities, solve problems, and get results. In an era of accelerating change, organizations, and national economies, most likely to succeed are those with the ability to adjust and adapt. Robert H. Waterman Jr., … shows how and what this sort of innovation must become a way of life for business organizations across the board. What is needed is an environment that fosters the use of an ad-hoc problem-solving technique, in effect an -adhocracy- that functions outside the often initiative-stifling bureaucracy”

Robert H. Waterman (1950) American writer

Robert H. Waterman (1993), Adhocracy: The Power to Change. W.W. Norton ; Book summary

Life, Way, Business, Problem

“The emphasis this week seems to be on the sun, and the fact that maybe its really the sun which has been driving climate change after all. That's what I've been saying for years, because its just unrealistic to ignore the largest and single most important contributor to our planets energy balance and to only focus on made-made CO2 and nothing else.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

This week in Global Warming http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/03/24/this-week-in-global-warming/, wattsupwiththat.com, March 24, 2007. 2007

Sun

“A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case. … It's nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully co-exist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace. We're all on the Earth together, and we have to learn some accommodation. … The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for. Slavery is beyond the pale. Child abuse is beyond the pale. Discrimination is beyond the pale. The pronouncing of death sentences on those who blaspheme against a religion (complete with bounties or reward for those who carry them out) is beyond the pale. It is not civilized, and it is owed no more respect in the name of religious freedom than any other incitement to cold-blooded murder. … That is — or, rather, ought to be, the message of multiculturalism, not the patronizing and subtly racist hypertolerance that "respects" vicious and ignorant doctrines when they are propounded by officials of non-European states and religions.”

Daniel Dennett book Darwin's Dangerous Idea

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995)

Death, Wisdom, Faith, Religion

“Science in India is getting better support now than in the past… Doing research has changed in the way that it is very grant oriented. The mentality that some accepted paradigm must be believed has become more rigid.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

Way, Support, Science, Past

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

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

Music, Color, Mathematics, Thinking

“If, while I'm painting, I distort or destroy a motif, it is not a planned or conscious act, but rather it has a different justification: I see the motif, the way I painted it, is somehow ugly or unbearable. Then I try to follow my feelings and make it attractive. And that means a process of painting, changing or destroying – for however long it takes – until I think it has improved. And I don't demand an explanation from myself as to why this is so.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote in an interview with Astrid Kaspar, 2000; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5 after 2000

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Painting

“The wind came steadily, like the rushing of a great cataract heard at a great distance, but the noises of the sea were continually changing, rising and falling, with the stupendous modulations of an orchestra played by giants.”

Liam O'Flaherty (1896–1984) Irish writer

"The Landing", from Spring Sowing (1924; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) p. 70

Sea

“Thinking consists in envisaging, realizing structural features and structural requirements; proceeding in accordance with, and determined by, these requirements; thereby changing the situation in the direction of structural improvements.”

Max Wertheimer (1880–1943) Co-founder of Gestalt psychology

Source: Productive thinking, 1945, p. 190

Thinking

“I find myself lined up with the surrealists because Surrealism means freedom for the creative side of man, for surprise & discovery & life, for an opening out & widening of mans consciousness, for changing life & against conserving worn out traditions, for variety not a uniformity, for opening not closing.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, Unpublished notes' for 'The Sculptor Speaks' (1937), p. 123

Life, Freedom

“Then the works of Max Weber, first translated from the German in the 1940s — he wrote around 1910, incredibly — began to find their way into social science thought. At first, with his celebration of the efficiency of bureaucracy, he was received with only reluctant respect, and even with hostility. All writers were against bureaucracy. But it turned out, surprisingly, that managers were not. When asked, they acknowledged that they preferred clear lines of communication, clear specifications of authority and responsibility, and clear knowledge of whom they were responsible to. They were as wont to say "there ought to be a rule about this," as to say "there are too many rules around here," as wont to say "next week we've got to get organized," as to say "there is too much red tape." Gradually, studies began to show that bureaucratic organizations could change faster than non-bureaucratic ones, and that morale could be higher where there was clear evidence of bureaucracy.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "The short and glorious history of organizational theory", 1973, p. 6

Hostility, Way, Communication, Knowledge

“For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegienace to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy. It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy. It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong and resolve to change course and get it right.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 353
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Wisdom, World, Democracy, Freedom

“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.”

Gregory Bateson book Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Source: Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), p. 143, as cited in: Lawrence S. Bale (1992) " Gregory Bateson’s Theory of Mind: Practical Applications to Pedagogy http://www.narberthpa.com/Bale/lsbale_dop/gbtom_patp.pdf". November 1992. p. 20

Behavior, Knowledge

““I see what Gene is driving at. To dream of changing the whole universe in accordance with a set of local preconceptions!… Oh, it’s ridiculous!”
“A missionary,” Gene repeated with a solemn nod. “By definition: a person who does without intending it more harm than good.””

John Brunner book The Tides of Time

Source: The Tides of Time (1984), Chapter 12 (p. 220)

Dreams, Universe, Personality

““HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”
That’s the question you should always ask believers when they make unsupported assertions, ranging from “God is loving” to “Our souls live on after death.” The answer will always be one of two things: “The Bible says so,” or “I just know it to be true.” Neither of those are rational answers, but they satisfy the religious.
It is in fact the “how-do-you-know-that” query that really distinguishes New Atheism from Old. While atheists have always decried the lack of evidence for theism, it is the infusion of scientists and science-friendly people into atheism, starting with Carl Sagan and continuing on to Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Pinker, and Dennett, that has made us realize that religious dogmas are in fact hypotheses, and you need reasons and evidence for accepting them. If you have none, then you have no reason to believe in God.
Nevertheless, religious dogma does change, but not because theology has found better reasons. It’s because a.) science has shown the dogma to be false (Genesis, Adam and Eve, creation, the Exodus, etc.) or b.) secular morality has shown that the tenets of religious belief are no longer supportable”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

hell as a place of fire, limbo, discrimination against gays, the Mormons’ refusal to let blacks be priests, etc. " Catholic official says that angels exist but are wingless http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/catholic-official-says-that-angels-exist-but-are-wingless/" December 21, 2013

Love, Death, God, People