Top 100 Change Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best change quotes ever written, picked out of the full change archive on QuoteForever. You will find Deepak Chopra, Barack Obama, Francis Bacon and Francois De La Rochefoucauld among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

With only 2 percent of the world's proven reserves of oil, we in the United States can pump until we are blue in the face and it will not change the fact that we need more diverse and more secure sources of energy.

2

Everything changes for the better when you take ownership of your own problems.

3

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

4

Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change—namely, human nature.

False. When things change, I will be happy. True. When I am happy, ... - Kyle Cease 5

False. When things change, I will be happy. True. When I am happy, things will change.

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of ... - Deepak Chopra 6

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.

7

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.

I can't really change my life to accommodate people who are jealous. ... - Sting 8

I can't really change my life to accommodate people who are jealous. I don't see why I should.

9

If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

10

Music can change the world because it can change people.

11

Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next.

12

If enough people think of a thing and work hard enough at it, I guess it's pretty nearly bound to happen, wind and weather permitting.

13

I wouldn't say I'm a very controlling person. For instance, when I talk to the actors, I don't tell them exactly what I want because I want them to surprise me. I even encourage them to change some of the verses of the script if they need to.

14

All changes are more or less tinged with melancholy, for what we are leaving behind is part of ourselves.

15

I'm a fighter by nature and nothing will ever change that.

16

Survey data suggest that war has become more unpopular. The majority of the American people now think it was a mistake, in a shift away from the 51 percent that endorsed it on Election Day. Admittedly this is only a small change in the population, from a majority to a minority. Nor do the changers earn grace for their new opinions. They still endorsed the war on Election Day and are still responsible for it.

17

Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.

18

there is no sin punished more implacably by nature than the sin of resistance to change.

19

My Spanish is getting a little bit loose. Sometimes I go to Spain and after I've been talking with my folks for a while... you start changing the verb for the adjective, for example, which is a common thing between Spanish and English. I change that sometimes but after a couple days there, boom, I'm back.

20

But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

21

In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

22

There are folks who will equivocate. They'll say, 'You know, I'm not a scientist.' Well, I'm not either. But the best scientists in the world know that climate change is happening.

23

Together we can change our culture for the better by ending violence against women and girls, artists have a unique power to change minds and attitudes and get us thinking and talking about what matters, and all of us, in our lives, have the power to set an example. Join our campaign to stop this violence.

24

One of the most courageous things we do is change. If everyone says you're wonderful every time you wear a red dress, and you change to yellow, that takes courage.

25

Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change.

26

Live for today, but hold your hands open to tomorrow. Anticipate the future and its changes with joy. There is a seed of God's love in every event, every unpleasant situation in which you may find yourself.

27

Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.

28

Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

29

I would change policy, bring back natural grass and nickel beer. Baseball is the belly-button of our society. Straighten out baseball, and you straighten out the rest of the world.

30

Climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and I think this is perhaps the most serious environmental issue facing us.

31

Life is about growth. People are not perfect when they're 21 years old.

32

Change isn't always good. Sometimes changing things is a terrible mistake.

33

There is nothing so stable as change.

34

Music can't change the world.

35

Schizophrenic is the best word - I change from day to day. I can be quite confusing. Indecisive, workaholic, and tired today.

36

Barack Obama's discovering what a nightmare dealing with hostage problems is - a discovery previously made by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, i don't see a lot of room for change in American policy.

37

According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to everyone his own value.

38

Unless man can make new and original adaptations to his environment as rapidly as his science can change the environment, our culture will perish.

39

Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change -Clary Fray

40

I just need to do something new.... I've got the big remote control of life in my hands, and I'm ready to start pushing some buttons.

41

Once I started working with the Polaroid, I would take a shot and if that shot was good, then I'd move the model and change the lighting or whatever... slowly sneaking up on what I wanted rather than having to predetermine what it was.

42

Since change is constant, you wonder if people crave death because it's the only way they can get anything really finished.

43

The change we seek for our nation is not the choice of an individual but must be the calling of a country.

44

The whole point about the true unconscious is that it is all the time moving forward, beyond the range of its own fixed laws or habits. It is no good trying to superimpose an ideal nature upon the unconscious.

45

The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.

46

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

47

He who stands with his face to the East in the morning will have the sun before him. If he does not change his posture, the Earth in the meantime having changed its, he will have the sun no longer before him, but behind.

48

Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.

49

The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.

50

Seeking the ideal has a long history, it produces many saints but few paradigm changes.

51

To shatter even the largest stones on earth, it takes only a small quantity of explosive powder.

52

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

53

Yesterday Senator John Kerry changed his mind and now supports the ban on gay marriages. I'm telling you this guy has more positions than Paris Hilton.

54

The only successful manifestation is one which brings about a change or growth in consciousness; that is, it has manifested God, or revealed him more fully as well as having manifested a form.

55

Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.

56

If you don't pay attention to the periphery, the periphery changes and the first thing you know the periphery is the center.

57

When something seems to change in the world, the rishis said, it is really you that is changing.

58

This moment - the one you're experiencing right now - is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire universe is as it is.

59

Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us. Surely, they must know that their deliverance depends on letting down their ropes. Only by working together is escape possible. Over time, many reach out, but most simply watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us (Bell).

60

I think if you're an actor, then you can work on stage - but if you've never done it before, you're going to have picked up a few things that you're going to need to change when you're working on stage.

61

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

62

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

63

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed.

64

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

65

This is an opportunity, I believe, for the Port and all of us to make a bold statement about how oil companies contribute to climate change, oil spills and other environmental disasters and reject this short-term lease.

66

If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

67

Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.

68

The point of the essay is to change things.

69

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change.

70

Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal.

71

It is a transition, from modelling to singing, but for me it's a natural progression. The modelling was something I did to travel the world and make some money and end up doing what I want to do. It was a way for me to go gather the experience to write an album and now sing about it.

72

A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty-one moment thinking "perhaps" and the next moment thinking "I don't know"-will never get desired results.

73

Taoism extols the virtue of flexibility. What survives on earth is what effortlessly adapts to the changing environment and changing circumstances.

74

Death is a withdrawal of consciousness. It's like taking attention from here and putting it there.

75

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries.

76

We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.

77

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she liver with, her only boy.

78

He is less likely to be mistaken who looks forward to a change in the affairs of the world than he who regards them as firm and stable.

79

Great changes are easier than small ones.

80

Nevertheless if any skillful Servant of Nature shall bring force to bear on matter, and shall vex it and drive it to extremities as if with the purpose of reducing it to nothing, then will matter (since annihilation or true destruction is not possible except by the omnipotence of God) finding itself in these straits, turn and transform itself into strange shapes, passing from one change to another till it has gone through the whole circle and finished the period.

81

The only thing constant in life is change

82

There is such a thing as a general revolution which changes the taste of men as it changes the fortunes of the world.

83

If only it were God's will that printed and written materials have as much influence on the people as the princes and their censors fear! Considering the countless good books we have, the world would have changed for the better a long time ago.

84

The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood.

85

A reasonable change of the world can not be instrumented by pure reason.

86

The single biggest reason companies fail is they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be.

87

This extraordinary arrogance that change must start at the top is a way of guaranteeing that change will not happen in most companies.

88

Times of luxury do not last long, but pass away very quickly; nothing in this world can be long enjoyed.

89

While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases...

90

Primarily, every rule change over the past ten years has been against the pitchers - lowering the mound and the designated hitter.

91

It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.

92

In the intermission, between group one and group two, you go to your dressing-room and change every stitch you have on you: underwear, shirt, tie, socks, pants and tails. Your other clothes are soaking wet.

93

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

94

In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity.

95

We need to stay in Iraq until the job is done. The President understands this and I'm glad that he is getting more countries to participate. We must change the chant of millions of young Muslims from 'Jihad Against the World' to 'Freedom and Democracy.'

96

There are no ultimate ends. Only games and more games. The winner this round is the loser the next round. Only the game is eternal. And the game is always the same, if you never change the rules.

97

I want to grow. I don't want to get stuck doing the same thing over and over and think I'm the best at it.

98

As every new breed of virus is conceived, created and released into the wild, another small change is made to the anti-virus software to combat the new threat.

99

I change myself, I change the world.

100

The first problem for all of us, men and woman, is not to learn, but to unlearn. We are filled with the popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up. Patriotism means obedience, age means wisdom, woman means submission, black means inferior: these are preconceptions imbedded so deeply in our thinking that we honestly may not know that they are there.

More Change quotes

This is the short list. The full change quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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