Quotes about transformation
page 9

Jacob Bronowski photo
Muhammad Iqbál photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
P. W. Botha photo

“Our enemies latched unto the word "apartheid" and in a very sly manner transformed it into the strongest weapon in the onslaught against freedom and civilization in our country.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As state president at a parade of the SA Police College, Pretoria, 20 June 1986, as cited in PW Botha in his own words, Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, p. 37

Azar Nafisi photo
Umberto Boccioni photo
Karol Cariola photo

“In general terms institutions have lost their credibility, not because they don't operate but rather because they operate behind closed doors; they have not been opened to the Chilean people. The national congress has been a closed space for many years, the binomial system has contained it within two political forces and it does not represent ideas calling for transformations, which have been present in our country for many years.”

Karol Cariola (1987) Chilean politician

Cariola, Mujer, Matrona, Dirigente Social y Política: Abrir el Congreso Nacional a la Ciudadanía, DiarioDigital, 2013-08-25 http://www.diarioreddigital.cl/index.php/politica/36-politica/443-karol-cariola-mujer-matrona-dirigente-social-y-politica-abrir-el-congreso-nacional-a-la-ciudadania-,
Original: "Las instituciones en general han perdido credibilidad, no porque no funcionen sino porque funcionan a puertas cerradas, porque no se han abierto a que el pueblo chileno pueda entrar a ellas. El congreso nacional ha sido un espacio cerrado durante muchos años, el binominal lo ha mantenido contenido en dos fuerzas políticas y no representa otras ideas que son de transformación y que han estado presentes durante muchos años en nuestro país".

Sri Aurobindo photo

“Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

William O. Douglas photo

“One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees… The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association, New York City (February 9, 1939), reported in James Allen, Democracy and Finance (1940, reprinted 1969), p. 291. This was Douglas's last speech as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission before his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Other speeches and writings

John Backus photo
John Gray photo
John Holloway photo
A. James Gregor photo
Augusto Boal photo

“When one of Feuerbach’s friends attempts to get him an academic position, Feuerbach writes to him: “The more people make of me, the less I am, and vice versa. I am … something only so long as I am nothing.” Hegel felt himself free in the midst of bourgeois restriction. For him, it was by no means impossible as an ordinary official … to be something and at the same time be himself. … In the third epoch of the spirit, that is, since the beginning of the “modern” world, he says … philosophers no longer comprise a separate class; they are what they are, in perfectly ordinary relationship to the state: officially appointed teachers of philosophy. Hegel interprets this transformation as the “reconciliation of the worldly principle with itself.” It is open to each and every one to construct his own “inner world” independent of the force of circumstances which has materialized. The philosopher can now entrust the “external” side of his existence to the “order,” just as the modern man allows fashion to dictate the way he will dress. … The important thing, Hegel concludes, is “to remain true to one’s purpose” within the context of the normal life of a citizen. To be free for truth and at the same time dependent on the state—to him, these two things seemed quite consistent with each other.”

From Hegel to Nietzsche, D. Green, trans. (1964), pp. 68-69.

“In fact, their contempt for the native converts was deeper than that for their Hindu subjects. They had all along looked down upon the native converts as Ajlãf (low-born) and Arzãl (base-born) as compared to the Ashrãf (exalted) which distinctive designation they had reserved for themselves….. It was at this critical juncture that the frustrated fraternity of foreign Muslims took a very strategic step. They started swearing by a solidarity with the native Muslims whom they had despised so far. They let loose on the native Muslims an army of mercenary Mullahs recruited, mostly from their own ranks. These Mullahs went about broadcasting the message that ‘Islam was in danger’, and that ‘Hindus were out to enslave and exploit the Muslim minority’. It was in this manner that the residues of Islamic imperialism managed to ‘merge’ themselves with the native converts, and to present themselves at the head of a strong phalanx pitted against whatever historical forces threatened their unjust privileges. Hitherto, the haughty Ashrãf had stood strictly aloof from the abject Ajlãf and the despised Arzãl. Now all of a sudden the latter became the former’s ‘brothers in faith’. This was a tremendous transformation of the political scene in the second decade of the 20th century. … The British never attached more than a nuisance value to this noisy fraternity which had to be befriended or ignored according to the needs of British policy at any time. It was the national leadership which was impressed by this mobilisation of the ‘Muslim masses’ and the pathos of ‘Muslim plight’. They accepted not only separate electorates but also weightages for the ‘Muslim minority’ in many provinces.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Antonio Negri photo
Jack LaLanne photo

“I was a whole new human being, he said of this transformation. I liked people, they liked me. It was like an exorcism, kicking the devil outta me!”

Jack LaLanne (1914–2011) American exercise instructor

In "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement, LosAngeles Times"

Jean Paul Sartre photo
Bell Hooks photo

“My thoughts have been shaped by the conviction that feminism must become a mass based, transformative impact on society.”

p. xiii https://books.google.com/books?id=L1WvBAAAQBAJ&pg=PR18.
Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984), Preface

Báb photo
Phillip Guston photo
Alex Salmond photo

“A skilled people, an economy with a competitive edge. These are the ways to transform economic performance.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

Charles Péguy photo

“Work for them was joy itself and the deep root of their being. And the reason of their being. There was an incredible honor in work, the most beautiful of all the honors. … We have known this devotion to l’ouvrage bien faite, to the good job, carried and maintained to its most exacting claims. … Today, what remains of all this? How has … the only people that loved to work … been transformed into one which in the workyard takes the greatest pains not to lift a hand?”

Charles Péguy (1873–1914) French poet, essayist, and editor

Dans ce bel honneur de métier convergeaient tous le plus beaux, tous le plus nobles sentiments. Une dignité. Une fierté. Ne jamais rien demander à personne, disaient-ils. … Un ouvrier de ce temps-là ne savait pas ce que c’est que quémander. C’est la bourgeoisie qui quémande. C’est la bourgeoisie qui, les faisant bourgeois, leur a appris a quémander.
Source: Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943), p. 81

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Edgar Froese photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo

“It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Conclusion, p. 539
The Coming of Age (1970)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo
Joseph Campbell photo

“The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power

Peter F. Drucker photo

“There is a point at which a transformation has to take place.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 640

John McCain photo
Paulo Freire photo

“A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an historical reality susceptible of transformation.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 2, page 253

Charles Krauthammer photo
Emil Nolde photo

“Every true artist creates new values, new beauty... When you notice anarchy, recklessness, or licentiousness in works of contemporary art, when you notice crass coarseness and brutality, then occupy yourself long and painstakingly precisely with these works, and you will suddenly recognize how the seeming recklessness transforms itself into freedom, the coarseness into high refinements. Harmless pictures are seldom worth anything.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Quote of Nolde's letter to Hans Fehr, 1905; published in 'Aus Leben und Werkstatt Emil Noldes', 'Das Kunstblatt' no. 7 (1919), p. 208; as cited in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 40
Hans Fehr expressed in a letter to Nolde his concern about the 'recklessness' and 'licentiousness' of some prints by Nolde. Fehr published Nolde's response in 1919
1900 - 1920

Georg Simmel photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Grady Booch photo

“Model Driven Architecture is a style of enterprise application development and integration, based on using automated tools to build system independent models and transform them into efficient implementations.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

Attributed to Grady Booch in: Tarek M. Sobh (2008) Advances in Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering. p. 457

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo

“The extreme moment of shock in battle presents in heightened and distorted form some of the distinctive characteristics of a whole society involved in war. These characteristics in turn represent a heightening and distortion of many of the traits of a social world cracked open by transformative politics. The threats to survival are immediate and shifting; no mode of association or activity can be held fixed if it stands as an obstacle to success. The existence of stable boundaries between passionate and calculating relationships disappears in the terror of the struggle. All settled ties and preconceptions shake or collapse under the weight of fear, violence, and surprise. What the experience of combat sharply diminishes is the sense of variety in the opportunities of self-expression and attachment, the value given to the bonds of community and to life itself, the chance for reflective withdrawal and for love. In all these ways, it is a deformed expression of the circumstance of society shaken up and restored to indefinition. Yet the features of this circumstance that the battle situation does share often suffice to make the boldest associative experiments seem acceptable in battle even if they depart sharply from the tenor of life in the surrounding society. Vanguardist warfare is the extreme case. It is the response of unprejudiced intelligence and organized collaboration to violence and contingency.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Plasticity Into Power: Comparative-Historical Studies on the Institutional Conditions of Economic and Military Success (1987), p. 160

Heather Brooke photo

“What I call the ‘information war’, where through the control of information our society is being radically transformed.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, Chatham House Talk (September 28, 2011)

Thich Nhat Tu photo
Roger Shepard photo
Willem de Sitter photo
Charlie Beck photo

“Beck is finishing Bratton’s legacy of transforming the department. It’s Beck who will bring it over the line and say, yes, LAPD is a new police force with a new culture, a new outlook, a new way of treating the public — especially the minority public — and we will never go back to the days of Rodney King because we have changed the culture of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Charlie Beck (1953) Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department

Civil rights lawyer Connie Rice — quoted in: December 5, 2014, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck earns good reviews; tough challenges lie ahead, Los Angeles Daily News, August 9, 2014, Brenda Gazzar http://www.dailynews.com/government-and-politics/20140809/lapd-chief-charlie-beck-earns-good-reviews-tough-challenges-lie-ahead,
About

Angus King photo

“I think we're going to demonstrate the power of one-to-one computer access that's going to transform education. … The economic future will belong to the technologically adept.”

Angus King (1944) United States Senator from Maine

On his program to purchase iBook computers for Maine public schools, as quoted in "Maine Students Hit the iBooks" by Katie Dean in WIRED (9 January 2002) https://archive.is/20130630155629/www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/01/49046

W. Edwards Deming photo
Vannevar Bush photo
Gleb Pavlovsky photo
Georg Brandes photo
Carlos Menem photo

“English: "All of us, to a lesser or greater extent, are responsible and coparticipants of this Argentine failure and together, only together, will we be the makers of a deep change and a positive transformation."”

Carlos Menem (1930) Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999

"Todos, en mayor o menor medida, somos responsables y copartícipes de este fracaso argentino y entre todos, sólo entre todos, seremos artífices de un cambio a fondo y de una transformación positiva."
El presidente Menem hace un llamamiento a la unidad para sacar a Argentina de su "crisis terminal" http://elpais.com/diario/1989/07/09/internacional/615938409_850215.html.

Mitt Romney photo
Camille Paglia photo
Vince Cable photo

“The House has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from national treasure to Treasury poodle.”

Vince Cable (1943) British Liberal Democrat politician

Harriet Harman
House of Commons' Hansard http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100622/debtext/100622-0007.htm#10062245000003, 22 June 2010
About

David Graeber photo
John Ruskin photo
Werner Erhard photo

“Transformation does not negate what has gone before; rather, it fulfills it. Creating the context of a world that works for everyone is not just another step forward in human history; it is the context out of which our history will begin to make sense.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[Lynne Twist, 2003, The Soul of Money: Transforming your Relationship with Money and Life, New York, New York, W.W. Norton., 252, 039305097]
Attributed

John A. McDougall photo
Stephen Baxter photo
Philip Roth photo
Martin Amis photo
Andy Warhol photo
Hermann Cohen photo
John Ogilby photo

“Rich Cloaths, nor Cost, nor Education can
Change Nature, nor transform and Ape into a Man.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

Fab. LV: Of an Ægyptian King and his Apes
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)

Karel Appel photo
Edgar Degas photo

“It is all well and good to copy what one sees, but it is much better to draw only what remains in one's memory. This is a transformation in which imagination and memory collaborate.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote of Degas in 1883, as cited by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 30 note 10
Degas confided this to Pierre-George Jeanniot
1876 - 1895

Harriet Harman photo

“This reckless Tory Budget would not be possible without the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems denounced early cuts; now they are backing them. They denounced VAT increases; now they are voting for them. How could they support everything they fought against? How could they let down everyone who voted for them? How could they let the Tories so exploit them? Do they not see that they are just a fig leaf? The Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary is just the Chancellor's fig leaf. The Deputy Prime Minister is just the Prime Minister's fig leaf. The Lib Dems' leaders have sacrificed everything they ever stood for to ride in ministerial cars and to ride on the coat tails of the Tory Government. Twenty-two Liberal Democrat ministerial jobs have been bought at the cost of tens of thousands of other people's. The Liberal Democrats used to stand up for people's jobs, but now they only stand up for their own. Look at the Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Twickenham. Mr Speaker, the House has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from national treasure to Treasury poodle.”

Harriet Harman (1950) British politician

They have no mandate for this Budget; this Budget has no legitimacy. Even if the Lib Dems will not speak up for jobs, we will. Even if they will not fight for fairness, we will, and even if they will not protest against Tory broken promises, we will.
Reaction to the Coalition's budget http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100622/debtext/100622-0007.htm#10062245000003, 22 June, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m6VJSaFB_E&feature=related

P. D. Ouspensky photo
Jean Tinguely photo

“Time is movement and cannot be checked. Time passes us and rushes on, and we remind behind, old and crumbled. But we are juvenated again and again by static and continuous movement. Let us be transformed! Let us be static! Let us be against stagnation and for static!”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

reprinted in 'Zero', ed. Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press 1973, p. 120
Quotes, 1960's, untitled statements in 'Zero 3', (1961)

John Ruysbroeck photo
Georg Simmel photo
David McNally photo

“To make history — to change the actual course of world events — is intoxicating, inspiring, and life-transforming.”

David McNally (1953) Canadian political scientist

Source: Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002), Chapter 1, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, p. 23

Elias Canetti photo

“I hate judgments that only crush and don’t transform.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 7
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

Naomi Klein photo
Herbert Read photo

“Poetry is properly speaking a transcendental quality, a sudden transformation in which words assume a particular influence.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Form in Modern Poetry(1932)

John Holloway photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Jim Yong Kim photo

“If we can unlock the full potential of the World Bank Group staff, I think we can have an even more transformational impact in country after country in the world.”

Jim Yong Kim (1959) Korean-American physician and anthropologist, 12th President of the World Bank

UN News Centre, Interview with Jim Yong Kim, 7 October 13

Manmohan Singh photo

“When we talk of a resurgent Asia, people think of the great changes that have come about in Shanghai. I share this aspiration to transform Mumbai in the next five years in such a manner that people would forget about Shanghai and Mumbai will become a talking point.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Comparing Mumbai and Shanghai, as quoted in "Mumbai struggles to catch up with Shanghai" http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GC16Df02.html, Asia Times (16 March 2005)
2001-2005

George Holmes Howison photo

“To present universal Nature as the deep in which each soul with its moral hopes is to be engulfed, is to transform existence into a system of radical and irremediable evil, and thus to make genuine religion impossible;”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.79-80

David Attenborough photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

1950s, The First and Last Freedom (1954)

Mao Zedong photo
Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“In this sense, we should continually be striving to transform every art into a science: in the process, we advance the art.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

Source: Computer Programming as an Art (1974), p. 669 [italics in source]

Mark Tobey photo

“The Cubists used the figure, but they broke it up... But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

quote from conversation with Seitz
1950's
Source: 'Reminiscence and Reverie', Mark Tobey, Magazine of Art, 44, October 1951, pp. 228, 231

Marie-Louise von Franz photo