Quotes about change
page 77

“It is very difficult for one person to change the actions of a government, but for one person to have a strong impact on a group at the local level is not impossible. This is happening all the time. People with something to say, with ideas that the community thinks are good and practical, are changing life in every country in the world. It is happening whether we are aware of it or not.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

Life, People, World, Communication

“A combination of a desire to communicate, and a passionate belief in the power of story to build up relationships, to shape us. People-watching. But also being aware of situations that are currently preoccupying people. Codes of conduct change, but what the human heart wants really doesn’t.”

Joanna Trollope (1943) British writer

On what stirs her to write in “Interview with Joanna Trollope” https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/41/a-writers-toolkit/interviews-with-authors/interview-with-joanna-trollope in Writers & Artists

People, Communication, Passion, Heart

“Governments have meddled incessantly with money, which in our time has been the fruitful parent of intricate discussions and painful changes.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Popular Political Economy: Four lectures delivered at the London Mechanics Institution (1827), p. 179

Money, Pain, Parent, Time

“I try to be respectful of the culture. I try to tell a story and maintain my voice as empowering women, but I tell it softly. I'm not a person who is like a radical or something like that and I don't try to clash with the culture. I try to tell an intimate story and bring people and hopefully change their perspective on film and they see film puts a human face on the culture rather than like expose it.”

Haifaa al-Mansour (1974) Saudi Arabian film director

Wadjda: Haifaa al Mansour on becoming Saudi Arabia's first female feature film director, The Guardian - 16 Jul 2013, at 0 Min 29 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFAwZdvRij4

Women, People, Personality

“Go down to City Hall and see what is on the agenda for the next council meeting—garbage collection, water supply, it does not matter which one—then go and learn everything you can about it. Read past reports, talk to people, learn the topic until you know it as well as anyone. Then when you get up to speak, or to make a suggestion for change, your voice will be heard because you are knowledgeable. That is how reform works.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

According to daughter Elizabeth Brandeis Raushenbush, as told to biographer Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (2009), p. 130.
Attributed

People, Making love, Knowledge, Learning

“We can actually change the expression of genes—tumor suppressing genes, tumor activating genes—by what we eat, what we put into our bodies. So, even if you've been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can still reshuffle it with diet.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Bad luck

“Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself.”

Coraline Ada Ehmke technologist, activist, and transgender feminist

Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub https://where.coraline.codes/blog/my-year-at-github/ (July 5, 2017)

Behavior

“For heroes do not make history—that is the historians’ job—but, passive, let themselves be borne along, swept up to the crest of the tide of change, of chance, of war.”

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

The Lady of Moge (p. 183)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)

War, Making love, History, Chance

“[T]he m-configuration may be changed.”

Alan Turing Computable Numbers

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)

“The machine may also change the square which is being scanned, but only by shifting it one place to right or left.”

Alan Turing Computable Numbers

On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936)

“It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Men, Feeling

“If the brutes have consciousness and no souls, then it is clear that, in them, consciousness is a direct function of material changes; while, if they possess immaterial subjects of consciousness, or souls, then, as consciousness is brought into existence only as the consequence of molecular motion of the brain, it follows that it is an indirect product of material changes. The soul stands related to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Soul, Relation ships

“The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery. Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1870s, On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and Its History (1874)

Appearance, Relation ships

“One of the most useful skills advocates can develop is a sincere satisfaction in changing their mind, putting the goal of effectiveness before the goal of having been correct.”

Jacy Reese (1992) American social scientist

The End of Animal Farming: How Scientists, Entrepreneurs, and Activists Are Building an Animal-Free Food System (2018)

Sincerity

“The change of way of worship under duress or for other reasons has not changed their forefathers or their culture. Culture is associated with a country and not with a religion.”

Balraj Madhok (1920–2016) Indian politician

B. Madhok: Indianisation quoted in Decolonizing the Hindu Mind (2001) by Koenraad Elst

Religion, Way, Country

“The audience I play to really is the bright 14-year-old: someone who is capable of sitting still and listening and watching and feeling for even three hours. I know, as I did at that age, they'll potentially have their lives changed.”

Ian McKellen (1939) British actor

Ian McKellen Tours with Royal Shakespeare, 2007 https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/ian-mckellen-tours-royal-shakespeare-25640/,

Age, Feeling

“We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Ecstasy, line 45

Soul, Intelligence

“Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

“Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas.”

Edward de Bono (1933) Maltese physician

Teaching Thinking (1991)

Error, Idea, Thinking, Study

“If we continue to use industrial resources for other purposes – defence, housing, etc. thus preventing the diversion of resources to export work, the [exchange] rate will continue to fall. ... the basic idea of internal stability of prices and employment, which had dominated economic policy for so long will not be maintainable. It will not be possible to maintain stable internal prices and wages; it will not be possible to avoid unemployment. There will be a continuous process of change and readjustment and much of this will be painful.”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

Chancellor of the Exchequer
Source: Memorandum, 'External Action' (21 February 1952) advocating Operation ROBOT, quoted in Correlli Barnett, The Verdict of Peace. Britain Between Her Yesterday and the Future (London: Pan, 2002), p. 162

Pain, Idea, Housing

“The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

Idea

“What is perceived as a cost by some will turn out to be the competitive advantage of Europe by helping maintain a well-trained, secure workforce, open to change.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Speech to a Trades Union Congress conference in London (31 August 1994), quoted in The Times (1 September 1994), p. 25
President of the European Commission

Help, Training

“The redeeming character of Franciscan enthusiasm-it's ability to change, brace and expand the most unlikely spirits and impel them to exacting discipline and selfless work-are fully shown in her.”

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) British saint, poet, novelist

Angela of Fogligno
The Mystics of the Church (1925)

“Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 4 “At the Core” (p. 269)

Thinking

“All change is relative. The universe is expanding relatively to our common material standards; our material standards are shrinking relatively to the size of the universe. The theory of the "expanding universe" might also be called the theory of the "shrinking atom."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

[…] Let us then take the whole universe as our standard of constancy, and adopt the view of a cosmic being whose body is composed of intergalactic spaces and swells as they swell. Or rather we must now say it keeps the same size, for he will not admit that it is he who has changed. Watching us for a few thousand million years, he sees us shrinking; atoms, animals, planets, even the galaxies, all shrink alike; only the intergalactic spaces remain the same. The earth spirals round the sun in an ever&#8209;decreasing orbit. It would be absurd to treat its changing revolution as a constant unit of time. The cosmic being will naturally relate his units of length and time so that the velocity of light remains constant. Our years will then decrease in geometrical progression in the cosmic scale of time. On that scale man's life is becoming briefer; his threescore years and ten are an ever&#8209;decreasing allowance. Owing to the property of geometrical progressions an infinite number of our years will add up to a finite cosmic time; so that what we should call the end of eternity is an ordinary finite date in the cosmic calendar. But on that date the universe has expanded to infinity in our reckoning, and we have shrunk to nothing in the reckoning of the cosmic being. We walk the stage of life, performers of a drama for the benefit of the cosmic spectator. As the scenes proceed he notices that the actors are growing smaller and the action quicker. When the last act opens the curtain rises on midget actors rushing through their parts at frantic speed. Smaller and smaller. Faster and faster. One last microscopic blurr of intense agitation. And then nothing. pp. 90–92 https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KHyV4-2EyrUC&pg=PA90 The Expanding Universe (1933)

Universe

“When agony is not present, no matter how imminent it looms, painful change must come from outside. This is a truth.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 20, p. 157

Pain, Truth

“…I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

On the living nature of stories in “The SRB Interview: Jackie Kay” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2016/03/the-srb-interview-jackie-kay/ in the Scottish Review of Books (2016 Mar 21)

People, Flowers, Idea, Memory

“You’re the secret to change your life, you’re the key to your own happiness. It's not the happy people who are thankful, it’s the thankful people who are happy.”

Gaur Gopal Das (1973) Indian spiritual leader, lifestyle coach and motivational speaker

[Power to choose is much bigger than the challenges one faces,says Gaur Gopal Das, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/power-to-choose-is-much-bigger-than-the-challenges-one-faces-says-gaur-gopal-das/articleshow/65516324.cms, Times of India, 23 August 2018]

Life, Happiness, People, Secret

“We gotta grow with the times, things have got to change. You know, sometimes the old rules don't apply anymore. And now...you know, we need some new rules.”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

When asked about the decriminalization of marijuana in Texas "DFW Norml Interview" https://www.dfwnorml.org/2012/12/dj-m-squared-interview by NORML (20 December 2012)

Time

“I think the “young adult” age is such a critical period of our lives. Young adults are still young enough to dream of magic and possibility, yet old enough to think for themselves and to begin to make real change in the world.”

Stacey Lee

On why young adult literature is so important in “Safer Is Not Always Better: An Interview With Stacey Lee” https://parnassusmusing.net/2019/08/13/interview-stacey-lee-downstairs-girl/ in Musing (2019 Aug 13)

Age, World, Making love, Dreams

“Even though the gusts of zephyr
knock till eternity
on the red stone walls
behind the city of flowers,
no change will occur.
Only that they will tire themselves.”

Parveen Shakir (1952–1994) Pakistani writer and poet

Sessions of Sweet, Silent Thought: translated by Mahmudul Hasani, p.4
Poetry, The Surveillance

Flowers

“The rapid accumulation of change is not always progress, and forward motion is not always an advance.”

Jonathan Weiner (1953) American nonfiction writer

Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 20, The Metaphysical Crossbeak (p. 289)

“Geneticists will tell you that. Evolution is always happening. What they mean is that the genes of this generation are not precisely what they were the preceding generation. Nor will they be precisely the same in the next. And evolution is that change.”

Jonathan Weiner (1953) American nonfiction writer

Source: The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time (1994), Chapter 9, Creation by Variation (p. 126)

“You will never ever be happy if you were trying to change who you are to fit in with others.”

Christian Canlubo (2002) Filipino Internet Entrepreneur

Source: https://twitter.com/canlubochris/status/1260612300135788546 | Christian Canlubo personal Twitter account Published by Christian Canlubo on his twitter https://twitter.com/canlubochris account

Happiness

“One critic called me one of the most magnificent resources Canada has allowed to escape to the United States. Because I was born and raised in Vancouver and lived up there until I was 17. My kids sons Bruce and Michael are, of course, American citizens. But not me. I defiantly refuse to change.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

“Keep track of gradual improvements. A small change every year can translate to a huge change in decades.”

Hans Rosling book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

“Attacking the new slave economy as it does, the animal liberation movement is a significant threat to global capital. Animal liberation challenges large sectors of the capitalist economy by assailing corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical giants and their suppliers. Far from being irrelevant to social movements, animal rights can form the basis for a broad coalition of progressive social groups and drive changes that strike at the heart of capitalist exploitation of animals, people, and the earth.”

Steven Best (1955) American activist

Source: The Politics of Total Liberation: Revolution for the 21st Century (2014), Chapter 4 "Rethinking Revolution: Veganism, Animal Liberation, Ecology, and the Left" (p. 103)

People, Heart, Animals

“(en) "I have always held the religion of Muhammad in high estimation because of its wonderful vitality. It is the only religion which appears to me to possess that assimilating capacity to the changing phase of existence which can make itself appeal to every age. I have studied him - the wonderful man and in my opinion far from being an anti-Christ, he must be called the Saviour of Humanity. I believe that if a man like him were to assume the dictatorship of the modern world, he would succeed in solving its problems in a way that would bring it the much needed peace and happiness: I have prophesied about the faith of Muhammad that it would be acceptable to the Europe of tomorrow. as it is beginning to be acceptable to the Europe of today."”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

о религии

Happiness, Age, World, Making love

“You change the world not through some all-encompassing ideology or mass religious conversion or misplaced dreams of the future, but by achieving the maturation and dignity of each individual in the present, here and now.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

World, Dreams, Future

“I don't know which way human psychology will go wrong. We have a world in which there is uncertainty. There are new technologies. And one of the problems is that we do things today with a thought to the future. Any purchase is one for the future. If you buy a refrigerator you are making a commitment to the future, so that you have food to eat for the next ten years. That's a simple theory, one of many simple theories -- theories that people agree on and that don't, in a fundamental way, change. But every once in a while there is unemployment, and wages will drop, and there will be several different interpretations.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

quoted in Conor Clarke, An Interview with Kenneth Arrow, Part One https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/07/an-interview-with-kenneth-arrow-part-one/22213/ (2009) New millennium

People, World, Making love, Food

“You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

In Jonathan Strahan (ed.) Drowned Worlds (e-book edition, ISBN 978-1-84997-930-6)
Short fiction, Elves of Antarctica (2016)

Life, Hate

“The dissolution of the Union radically changed the situation in Europe and the world, disrupted the geopolitical balance, and undermined the possibility of carrying further many positive processes that were under way in world politics by the end of 1991. I am convinced that the world today would be living more peacefully if the Soviet Union - of course in a renewed and reformed version - had continued to exist.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

World, Way

“Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Life, Soul, Universe, Waiting

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”

movie Dead Poets Society

John Keating character

World, Idea, Business

“Repression against the Amazigh people is still very much alive and is very likely to worsen, given that most North African countries are controlled by authoritarian monarchies and governments, where there is little room for social change and much less cultural change.”

Massin Akandouch (2001) Amazigh activist

Original quote in Catalan September 9, 2020 Massin's Op-ed at Núvol.com Magazine. https://www.nuvol.com/llengua/la-bandera-il-legal-119777/

People, Country

“We must also focus on helping those most vulnerable to having their jobs displaced due to the rapid pace of technological change, and work together to assist them in learning a new skill so they can continue to provide for themselves and for their families.”

Ivanka Trump (1981) American businesswoman, socialite, fashion model and daughter of Donald Trump

6 March 2019 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-american-workforce-policy-advisory-board-meeting/ 2019

Family, Learning, Help

“But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and fruitful changes in its tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Leninism or Marxism? (1904)

“Regarding the constant change of the world, visible to our coarse organs, as well as its dissolution, Buddhism points out that those dissolutions are temporary and periodical; for, according to the principle of evolution guided by the law of individual and collective Karma, the disappearing world will in turn manifest a new world with all its contents, just as our Universe was manifested from the primary substance—matter.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

World, Law, Universe

“What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses. An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we.”

Kristen Marhaver American marine biologist

Source: Why I still have hope for coral reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_why_i_still_have_hope_for_coral_reefs (April 2017)

World, Game, Chance, Time

“Democracy for most of us is not an ism. It is a way of life. It does not represent any rigid form of state or national organization. It is something constantly developing and unfolding, changing from day to day, making mistakes, advancing in this direction and retreating in that, but always animated by a few fundamental ideas: that men have a right to live their own lives, provided they don’t tread too heavily on other people’s toes;…”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
p. 31

Life, Men, People, Making love

“Lynchings in the past have significantly shaped race relations in the present. A killing such as George Floyd’s lands on black people with a much heavier psychological weight because of lynching’s legacy. Too many white people fail to recognize this, and that needs to change. The hurt is too great, the simmering fear and anger too volatile, to bury forever. All Americans who would seek or demand a nation that is fairer to every citizen, less racist, and more peaceful have a responsibility to know this history in detail. … Confronting this ugliness would be difficult for everyone, of course, but it should be attempted. Ignorance and denial certainly have not worked, because this American wound still bleeds.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

People, Fear, Peace, History