Quotes about transformation
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“She transforms once again into someone carefree, and I transform into someone whose only care is her.”

Source: Every Day

“The small are always dependent on the great; they are “small” precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other “greats” and who can transform it in an original manner.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 35

Thinking, Dependency

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

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

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Men, God, Hate, People

“A person susceptible to "wanderlust" is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.”

Pico Iyer (1957) British writer

Personality

“The task of art is to transform what is continuously happening to us, to transform all of these things into symbols, into music, into something which can last in man’s memory. That is our duty. If we don’t fulfill it, we feel unhappy.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Art, Music, Feeling, Memory

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”

Toni Cade Bambara (1939–1995) author, activist, professor

Way

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Inspirational, Love, Suffering

“There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Way, Understanding, Effort, Change

“Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Love, Soul, Change

“My face felt like my normal face, as if that part of me hadn’t transformed into a bird. [Fine, Sadie. Call me the Carter-headed chicken. Happy? ]”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Bird, Parting, Happiness

“Make your interactions with people transformational, not just transactional.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

People

“We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

“I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”

Bob Hope (1903–2003) American comedian, actor, singer and dancer

Hope, Tear

“What do we find God 'doing about' this business of sin and evil?…God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Essays, The Triumph of Easter (1938)
Source: The Whimsical Christian: 18 Essays

God, Business, Evil, Dead

“I can honestly say that my misery had been transformed into common unhappiness, so by Freud's definition I have achieved mental health.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Health

“… the way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world. Daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds.”

Michael Pollan book The Omnivore's Dilemma

Source: The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

World, Way, Nature

“God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

Life, God, Passion

“I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Pleasure, Knowledge

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

For Team, People, World

“Being able to write becomes a kind of shield, a way of hiding, a way of too instantly transforming pain into honey.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Pain, Way

“Every new medium transforms the nature of human thought. In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.”

James Gleick book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Source: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

History, Nature

“What does learning mean: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Life, Knowledge, Learning

“Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

“Know that ever about you stands the reality of love, and each moment you have the power to transform your world by what you have learned.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

Love, World, Reality, Learning

“I'm filled with awe, as I always am, as I watch her transform from a woman who calls me to kill a spider to a woman immune to fear.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Fear

“Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Dreams, Reality

“Political activism is seductive because it seems to offer the possibility that one can improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one's perceptions and transforming one's self.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Personality

“The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

“The energy of hatred won't get you anywhere; but the energy of forgiveness, which reveals itself through love, will transform your life in a positive way.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

Love, Life, Way, Forgiveness

“Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women…. they ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Women, People, Reality, Strong

“Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“You hold in your hand an invitation: to remember the transforming power of forgiveness and loving kindness. To remember that no matter where you are and what you face, within your heart peace is possible.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Love, Peace, Forgiveness, Heart

“That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Reality

“You never know when, and you never know who, but someday a stranger will burst through the door of your life and transform it utterly. The world will be turned upside down, and you will be happier for it.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Nothing but Shadows

Life, World

“I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Love, World

“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Thinking

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

People, Forgiveness, Time

“The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our ‘natural’ condition.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Love, Nature

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Beauty, Sense

“If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

People, Hope

“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Poems

Leadership, Reality

“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.”

Judith Butler (1956) American philosopher and gender theorist

World, Reading, Parting

“But when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create.”

Mohsin Hamid book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Source: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Books, Imagination, Reading

“Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation.
Use it!”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Life

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”

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

Way, Suffering

“But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Imagination, Change

“Embrace each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-transformation.”

Bernie S. Siegel (1932) American writer

Life

“Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

War, Children, Appearance, Time

“There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Losing Season: A Memoir

Teachers, Loss

“You’ll never know that just sitting across a room full of people, I have transformed you into a goddess. A destroyer of despair.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

People, Despair

“The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into…

A monkey?

I think not.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Thinking, Tree

“We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Imagination, Idea, Reality

“Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Life, People, Time

“He suddenly understood the message of so many spiritual teachers that the only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

Source: The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives

Teachers

“How strange to have the power to literally transform yourself into other people, and yet be so unable to put yourself in their place.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

People

“Transcend your abuse and transform it into a source of courage, creativity and compassion.”

Adeline Yen Mah (1937) Author and physician

Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter

Courage

“Of all the virtues we can learn no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Happiness

Life, Learning

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

love, Friendship, For Him, For Friend

“The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth (book), Ch. 2 : The Journey Inward
Context: One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.

Light

“It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards.”

Marjane Satrapi (1969) Artist

Source: The Complete Persepolis

Fear

“Love transforms, Love heals. But sometimes it lays deadly traps and ends up destroying the person who decided to surrender himself completely.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Love, Personality

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
First lines
Variant translation (by David Wyllie): One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

Dreams

“We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

People, World, Change

“Love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 4

Love, Marriage, Support

“Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Sun

“Redemption, transformation--God how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn't everyone?”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

God

“Body and soul, let's all go / transformed into arrows! / Piercing the air / body and soul, let's go / with no turning back.”

Ko Un (1933) korean poet

Soul

“The torment of love can transform people into wretched monsters”

Mathias Malzieu book La Mécanique du cœur

Source: La Mécanique du cœur

Love, People

“Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment into something better”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

“I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

People

“The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly… "Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.”

Barry Hughart book Bridge of Birds

Source: Bridge of Birds

Science

“It is our own thoughts that hold the key to miraculous transformation.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness And Making Miracles

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Love, Life, Pain, Hate

“When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking.”

Max Horkheimer (1895–1973) German philosopher and sociologist

Source: "The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937), p. 162.

World, Thinking, Sense, Change

“In most of the old colonial world, the struggle for independence is coming to an end. Even in areas behind the Curtain, that which Jefferson called "the disease of liberty" still appears to be infectious. With the passing of ancient empires, today less than 2 percent of the world's population lives in territories officially termed "dependent." As this effort for independence, inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for interdependence — is transforming the world about us. And the spirit of that new effort is the same spirit which gave birth to the American Constitution. That spirit is today most clearly seen across the Atlantic Ocean. The nations of Western Europe, long divided by feuds far more bitter than any which existed among the 13 colonies, are today joining together, seeking, as our forefathers sought, to find freedom in diversity and in unity, strength.”

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

1962, Address at Independence Hall

World, Disease, Birth, Effort

“So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry. Sabotage is essentially a protest of the human spirit against dull mechanism. And the emphasis which democracy places upon political methods tends to transform mere sporadic acts of sabotage into an organized conspiracy against society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 56

Democracy, Motivation, Business, Nature

“Liberalism was failing. If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

As quoted by Eric Hobsbawn, in “A Question of Faith,” Maya Jaggi, The Guardian (Sept. 14, 2002)

World, Passion, Time, Future

“One of the exciting things about today is [that] people are not, for the most part (…) even in their spiritual domain, they're not satisfied necessarily with just an internal revelatory spiritual experience anymore. Most people that I meet are hooked up in such a way that it only is really deeply meaningful to them unless it actually starts to transform how they move and experience… their contribution to life.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

Wake Up San Francisco event (2015) <br class="br">Source: Alanis Morissette - Wake Up San Francisco with Adyashanti & Tami Simon - YouTube (starts at 11:43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr_ClddVgJs

Life, People, Way, Parting

“That is the artist's job: take mineral rock from dark silent earth, transform it into shining light-reflecting form from sky.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Light

“The brave and faithful people of Iran too have many questions and grievances, including: the coup d’etat of 1953 and the subsequent toppling of the legal government of the day, opposition to the Islamic revolution, transformation of an Embassy into a headquarters supporting the activities of those opposing the Islamic Republic (many thousands of pages of documents corroborate this claim), support for Saddam in the war waged against Iran, the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane, freezing the assets of the Iranian nation, increasing threats, anger and displeasure vis-à-vis the scientific and nuclear progress of the Iranian nation (just when all Iranians are jubilant and celebrating their country’s progress), and many other grievances that I will not refer to in this letter.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Paragraph 23
2006, Letter to George W. Bush, 2006

War, People, Faith, Question

“I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

ThurgoodMarshall.com, Speeches. Constitutional Speech http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/speeches/constitutional_speech.htm (May 6, 1987)

Wisdom, War, Justice, Sense

“On the one side, the Mexican side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the American side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and depression, when the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-American border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American dream.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

Sadness, Dreams, Optimism, Change

“The Weimar Constitution is for me not a noli me tangere; I did not participate in its creation, and it is in its basic principles contrary to my political thinking…I believed that a change of the constitution was approaching, and that I could help towards this by methods which were not unnecessarily to lead through civil war. So far as concerns my attitude towards the international Social Democracy, I have to confess that at the outset I believed in the possibility to winning over part of it to national co-operation; but I have revised this opinion long ago, a long time before our conversation, in so far as the Social Democratic Party is concerned, not the German working class as such…I see clearly that a collaboration with the Social Democratic Party is impossible because it repudiates the idea of military preparedness…I do not consider a Stresemann cabinet viable, not even after its transformation. This lack of confidence I have expressed to the chancellor himself as well as to the president, and I have told them that in the long run I could not guarantee the attitude of the Reichswehr to a government in which it had no confidence…A Stresemann government cannot last without the support of the Reichswehr and of the forces standing behind it.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to von Kahr (2 November 1923), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 117.

War, Democracy, Confidence, Idea

“Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Change, Sincerity

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

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

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

Men, War, Secret, Communication

“Objectively speaking, the history of North Korean state has been one of an ambitious social if brutal experiment that ended in a very ugly disaster. Essentially, the 70 years of the Kim Family's rule have been the wasted years. The Kim family did not merely build one of the world’s most “perfect” Stalinist dictatorships, but also managed to transform into a basket case what once, in the 1940s, was the most advanced industrial economy of East Asia outside Japan. However, one should not expect that such a pessimistic, if honest, view of North Korea’s past, is going to be enthusiastically embraced by those North Koreans who bother to care about such matters.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

Get Ready For Selective Amnesia (November 2015)

World, Family, History, Past

“Sherry…a silly, sickly compound, the use of which will transform a nation, however bold and warlike by nature, into a race of sketchers, scribblers, and punsters, in fact into what Englishmen are at the present day.”

George Borrow book Wild Wales

Wild Wales (1862), ch. 38.

Nature

“When we intended to enjoy being cruel, we must transform our victim into either a beast or a god.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

God

“The ultimate stakes in politics are the qualities of the direct relations among people…. This fine texture of routinized human relations is the primary social reality. Even the boldest transformative efforts often take it for granted or, having acknowledged its importance, fail to alter it.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 397

People, Reality, Effort

“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination… The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-2009 of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (23 June 2009) <br class="br">Reviews, One-star reviews

Music, Imagination, Hell, Revenge

“Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul

Love, Lovers, Sun, Night

“A man cannot write a poem or a story that will transform the whole nature of man, his reality and his truth, making them greater and nobler.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Truth, Nature, Reality

“How could I as an individual, Ernesto Guevara, accept the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa conferred by the School of Education, since the only education I have imparted has been that of guerrilla camps, harsh words, and fierce example? And I believe such things certainly cannot be transformed into a cap and gown. That is why I continue to wear my Rebel Army uniform.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)

Education, School

“Faced with new realities, our systems have to transform — as the society has transformed. They have to learn to co-change (co-evolve) with their constantly changing environments. Thus, it is imperative that we understand what these transformations and new realities are. We have to grasp their implications for systems, and apply our understanding of these implications to the transformation of our systems. We need to learn how to recreate our systems, how to redesign them so that they will have a “goodness of fit” with the emerged new realities. No small task by any means!”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Béla H. Bánáthy (1994) Creating our future in an age of transformation. p. 1; Cited in: Sherryl Stalinski (2005) A Systems View of Social Systems, Culture and Communities: The Legacy of Bela H. Banathy. Saybrook Graduate School. p. 11.

Understanding, Reality, Learning, Change

“The approach that dominates organizational theory, teaching, and practice for most of the twentieth century looked at organizations from the top-down, starting with a view of the CEO as the "leader" who shapes the organization's strategy, structure, culture, and performance potential. The nature of work and the role of the workforce enter the analysis much later, after considerations of technology and organization design have been considered. However, if the key source of value in the twenty-first-century organization is to be derived from the workforce itself, an inversion of the dominant approach will be needed. The new perspective will start not at the top of the organization, but at but at the front lines, with people and the work itself — which is where value is created. Such an inversion will lead to a transformation in the management and organization of work workers, and knowledge.”

Thomas A. Kochan (1947) American academic

Source: "Beyond McGregor’s Theory Y", 2002, p. 2: introduction; Republished in: Douglas McGregor. The Human Side of Enterprise 1960/2006. p. 366

People, Nature, Knowledge