„The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.“

1940s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021.

Albert Einstein701

German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativi… 1879 - 1955

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

— Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

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„Triumphant capitalism has unleashed a powerful drive toward inequality, not improvement, in the social sphere.“

— Herbert Schiller American media critic 1919 - 2000

Source: Living In The Number One Country (2000), Chapter One, Number One And the Political Economy Of Communication, p. 56

„You know, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? It's the same with powerlessness. Absolute powerlessness corrupts absolutely. Einstein said everything had changed since the atom was split, except the way we think. We have to think anew.“

— Studs Terkel American author, historian and broadcaster 1912 - 2008

The Guardian interview (2002)

Way, Thinking, Change

„Choice is the doorway to our creative power. To unleash this power, we must begin from the state of beingness.“

— Ilchi Lee South Korean businessman 1950

Source: Human Technology: A Toolkit for Authentic Living

„There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened caveman felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property.“

— U.G. Krishnamurti, book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything
Context: Our mind (and there are no individual minds — only "mind", which is the accumulation of man's knowledge and experience) has created the notion of the psyche and evolution. Only technology progresses, while we as a race are moving closer to complete and total destruction of the world and ourselves. Everything in man's consciousness is pushing the whole world, which nature has so laboriously created, toward destruction. There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened caveman felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property.

Feeling, Thinking, Change

„When we come to inanimate elements, the prevailing view has been that time and sequential change are entirely foreign to their nature. According to this view they do not have careers; they simply change their relations is space. We have only to think of the classic conception of atoms. The Newtonian atom, for example, moved and was moved, thus changing its position in space, but it was unchangeable in its own being. …In itself it was like a God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.“

— John Dewey American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer 1859 - 1952

Time and Individuality (1940)

God, Nature, Thinking, Change

„Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be made like this?“

— Winston S. Churchill Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874 - 1965

In a letter to his wife Clemmie, during the build up to World War I.
Early career years (1898–1929)

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„[My party is] committed to work co-operatively with every other opposition party and do everything in our power to avoid a catastrophic crash-out Brexit“

— Adam Price Welsh politician and Plaid Cymru leader (born 1968) 1968

Brexit: Opposition MPs agree strategy to block no deal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49483374 BBC News (27 August 2019)
2019

„Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.“

— Joseph Campbell American mythologist, writer and lecturer 1904 - 1987

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Life, Change

„For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.“

— Stephen Hawking British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author 1942 - 2018

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Imagination, Learning, Animals

„The bombs held in current nuclear arsenals are seventy times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. If we don’t begin opposing the drift towards more and more of them, we will live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud for the rest of our lives — and millions may die there.“

— Johann Hari British journalist 1979

And the solution to the Iran crisis is..., JohannHari.com, January 22, 2006, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=783,

Time

„Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.“

— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 391.

Thinking, Change

„Thus we are saved and thus society must be redeemed.“

— Kirby Page American clergyman 1890 - 1957

The Personality of Jesus (1932)
Context: By his own experience of God and his estimate of man, by his emphasis upon and practice of brotherhood, by his repudiation of hatred and violence, while attacking with audacity deeply entrenched inequities, and by his vicarious suffering on the cross, Jesus awakens, challenges and inspires us to take up the cross and follow in his sacrificially redemptive steps. Thus we are saved and thus society must be redeemed.

„I think you can understand time just by the fact that everything, everything changes. Everything ages. You’re born, you die. The living beings as the objects if they are new, then they become old. Even the stones, even in our Earth, aged four and a half billion years, has changed enormously. So we can define time only thanks to the fact that everything changes.“

— Margherita Hack Italian astrophysicist and popular science writer 1922 - 2013

Interview with Euronews' Claudio Rocco in 2011; as quoted in " Science says 'ciao' to Italy's Margherita Hack: the 'lady of the stars'", euronews.com (1 July 2013) https://www.euronews.com/2013/07/01/science-says-ciao-to-italy-s-margherita-hack-the-lady-of-the-stars.

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„Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every day. […] There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can't save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today.“

— Greta Thunberg, book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Declaration of Rebellion, Extinction Rebellion, Parliament Square, London, 31 October 2018.
Cited in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Penguin Books, 2019, page 12 (ISBN 9780141991740).
2018, "Almost Everything is Black and White" (October 2018)

World, Change