Change can come unexpectedly, for the better or worse, it’s something you can never tell. Sometimes it even takes a moment of reflection. Just to see what changed, how far you’ve come, and how the surroundings took another shape. There are many quotes about change that reflect the constant shifting of our inner and outer worlds. Yet every person reading them might find a different meaning to them.
If you’re looking to make some changes in your life and need some motivation, these moving quotes on change might be just the kick you need. If you want to change yourself, your surroundings, or any other part of your life, all it takes is motivation, eagerness to improve, and patience. Change comes with time and constant movement toward your goal, no matter how small the steps might be.
Other people change too. It might be difficult to understand from the outsider’s point of view, we never know what happened in other people’s lives. But with these quotes about why people change, we hope you’ll be able to understand the reasons why a little bit better.
Before you scroll on to read these change quotes, remember that the first step is always to be the change you want to see in the world. Only then can you see some actual shifting in the way things are. So, read on, comment your thoughts, and feel free to share any more sayings about change that you know of.
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“There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.” ― Douglas Adams
“Just because things change doesn't mean you chose wrong in the first place. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it forever.” ― Emily P. Freeman
“And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, and fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin
“Connecting with others gives us a sense of inclusion, connection, interaction, safety, and community. Your vibe attracts your tribe, so if you want to attract positive and healthy relationships, be one! Staying connected and getting reconnected feeds the flow of goodness which empowers our humanity.” ― Susan C. Young
“You can’t change the system unless you know it well. You can’t play chess well unless you know all the moves.” ― Abhaidev
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” ― Steve Jobs
“I was, but then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long but that never works.” ― Sarah Ockler
“We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.” ― Charles R. Swindoll
“You can’t change how other people think and act, but you’re in full control of yourself. When it comes down to it, the only question that matters is this: If nothing in the world ever changes, what type of man are you gonna be?” ― Nic Stone
I want to be someone who was kind in the face of cruelty and upheld my integrity in the face of corruption.
“Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder's frame of mind, or anyone thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.” ― Haruki Murakami
“It’s a reminder for anyone who needs it including myself; there ain’t anything wrong about falling apart, just take it as a beautiful chance for you; to rebuild yourself all over again and to recreate a new version of you who doesn’t know what it means to give up on the person you’re becoming …” ― Samiha Totanji
“You ask, ‘Why am I really fighting this?’ If the answer is ‘Because I’m scared of what things will be like,’ then, most times, you’re fighting for the wrong reason...” ― David Wroblewski
“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.” ― William S. Burroughs
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli
“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.” ― Barack Obama
“The urge toward action, i.e., improvement of the conditions of life, is inborn in man. Man himself changes from moment to moment and his valuations, volitions, and acts change with him. In the realm of action, there is nothing perpetual but change.” ― Ludwig von Mises
“It's important to remember that we all change each other's minds all the time. Any good story is a mind-altering substance.” ― Hank Green
“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” ― Johnny Cash
“You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change.” ― Sue Grafton
“When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.” ― Dean Jackson
“We should strive to welcome change and challenges because they are what help us grow. Without them, we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. ” ― H.G. Wells
“I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.” ― Ray Bradbury
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” ― Harriet Tubman
“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.” ― Katharine Hepburn
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” ― Jon Krakauer
“Take it from me: if you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging up your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do - the only thing - is run.” ― Lauren Oliver
“Don't be too quick to conclude what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise, it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.” ― Eckhart Tolle
“You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.” ― Charlotte Eriksson
“It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
“There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, perform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon.” ― Hubert Selby Jr.
“But, she knew, you didn’t have to marry your soulmate, and you didn’t even have to marry an Interesting. You didn’t always need to be the dazzler, the firecracker, the one who cracked everyone up or made everyone want to sleep with you, or the one who wrote and starred in the play that got the standing ovation. You could cease to be obsessed with the idea of being interesting.” ― Meg Wolitzer
“The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.” ― George R.R. Martin
“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” ― Alexis de Tocqueville
“The Doctor is all of us, he lives and dies as all of us, and we need him to – because no matter the anvil-imagery of the Doctor as Christ, this is actually a far older and far simpler story than that. Everything changes. We all regenerate. I am not the same woman who first saw Rose ascend. Years go by and I become someone new, with the same memories but a new face, a new self.” ― Catherine Valenti
“I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass.” ― May Sarton
“To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things. Global betterment is a mental process, not one that requires huge sums of money or a high level of authority. Change has to be psychological. So if you want to see real change, stay persistent in educating humanity on how similar we all are than different. Don't only strive to be the change you want to see in the world, but also help all those around you see the world through commonalities of the heart so that they would want to change with you.” ― Suzy Kassem
“And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you—the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people.” ― Sara Zarr
“No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.” ― Emma Goldman
“Sometimes the door closes on a relationship, not because we failed but because something bigger than us says this no longer fits our life. So, lock the door, shed a tear, turn around and look for the new door that's opened. It's a sign that you're no longer that person you were, it's time to change into who you are. It's going to be okay.” ― Lee Goff
“But change proves that you are still alive. Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die.” ― Robin Hobb
“Then he asked if I didn’t like things changing. And I said I wouldn’t mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying.” ― Mark Haddon
“In such a society as ours the only possible chance for change, for mobility, for political, economic, and moral flow lies in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, in the use of fictions, of language.” ― Kathy Acker
“Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2).” ― Steven James
“You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It’s only kids in high school who are convinced they’re never going to change. There’s always going to be a pep rally and there’s always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future.” ― Stephen King
“During the last six months the little girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.” ― Noel Streatfeild
“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.” ― Henri J.M. Nouwen
“God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law.” ― Criss Jami
“At any given moment in our lives, there are certain things that could have happened but didn't. The magic moments go unrecognized, and then suddenly, the hand of destiny changes everything.” ― Paulo Coelho
“The day drags along, you make thousands of plans, you imagine every possible conversation, you promise to change your behavior in certain ways – and you feel more and more anxious until your loved one arrives. But by then, you don't know what to say. The hours of waiting have been transformed into tension, the tension has become fear, and the fear makes you embarrassed about showing affection.” ― Paulo Coelho
“It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change are basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.” ― Terry Crowley
“The reality is; there is something which exists but what that something is; remains a question. Either because we are not capable to reveal it yet or because with time and movement it changes itself and has no truth in it. But what’s the reason for its existence without having or revealing any truth, that’s the evidence we need to find.” ― Zaman Ali
“Oh, how wondrous our lives are! How everything can change in a single instant… It is truly a miracle of God. We believe we can control our lives as we want, but in truth, we never know what’s coming up. Hence, all we can do, in the end, is enjoy the moments given, pray, and hope for the better. We must always remember that everything will change, and every moment will pass, so it should be embraced whilst it is still within our grasp.” ― Tamuna Tsertsvadze
“Perhaps it requires of you precisely this existential anxiety in order to begin. Precisely these days of transition are perhaps the period when everything in you is working..” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
“Here was my choice: I could continue down the well-trod path upon which I'd been running for so very long and pass along the inheritance like a baton, as blithely as I did my light hair and fair skin. My daughter could do her best to outrun it... Or I could slow down, catch my breath, and look mindfully for a new path. There had to be another way and I owed it to my daughter to find it.” ― Adrienne Brodeur
“There's a type of person who thinks he's getting away with something by not believing in anything. But not believing in anything IS believing in something. It's active, not passive. To believe in nothing is to change nothing. It means you're endorsing the present, and the present is a horror[...] Irreverence is the ultimate luxury item.” ― Lindy West
“Suffering drives progress. The source of all suffering is the desire for a change in state. This is also the source of all progress. The desire to change your state is what powers you to take action. With craving, we are dissatisfied but driven. Without craving, we are satisfied but lack ambition.” ― James Clear
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu
“The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.” ― Susanna Kearsley
“The strangeness of Time. Not in its passing, which can seem infinite, like a tunnel whose end you can't see, whose beginning you've forgotten, but in the sudden realization that something finite, has passed, and is irretrievable.” ― Joyce Carol Oates
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett
“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” ― C. JoyBell C.
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with different points of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” ― Eric Roth
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ― Barack Obama
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don't.” ― Stephen King
“Sometimes," Jem said, "our lives can change so fast that the change outpaces our minds and hearts. It's those times, I think, when our lives have altered but we still long for the time before everything was altered-- that is when we feel the greatest pain. I can tell you, though, from experience, you grow accustomed to it. You learn to live your new life, and you can't imagine, or even really remember, how things were before.” ― Cassandra Clare
“She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward. ” ― Markus Zusak
“Right now I want a word that describes the feeling that you get a cold sick feeling, deep down inside, when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don't want it to, but you can't stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again quite be the same person you were.” ― Jennifer Donnelly
“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” ― Jelaluddin Rumi
“Changing your outside world cannot make you happy if you are an unhappy person. Real personal change can only happen from the inside out. If you first create the change within yourself, you can turn your life around.” ― Roy T. Bennett
“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.” ― Bryce Courtenay
“Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.” ― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
“The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.” ― Joseph Campbell
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before.” ― Alice Walker
“When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like an earthquake or an explosion, where all of a sudden we're like this different person. I think it's smaller than that. Most people wouldn't even notice the kind of thing unless they looked at us close. Which, thank God, they never do. But you notice it. Inside you that change feels like a world of difference. And you hope this is it. This is the person you get to be forever... that you'll never have to change again.” ― Laura J. Burns
“The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.” ― Aldous Huxley
“I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought I'd die if someone left me. It's ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.” ― Deb Caletti
“Reading poetry is like undressing before a bath. You don't undress out of fear that your clothes will become wet. You undress because you want the water to touch you. You want to completely immerse yourself in the feeling of the water and to emerge anew.” ― Kamand Kojouri
“I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
“The old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy ... a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of 'solving Amy'. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebooks on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings.” ― Gillian Flynn
“I never said it was easy to find your place in this world, but I’m coming to the conclusion that if you seek to please others, you will forever be changing because you will never be yourself, only fragments of someone you could be. You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings.” ― Charlotte Eriksson
“I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long-term health of the host environment in mind. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges.” ― Paul Stamets
“I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.” ― Dorothy Allison
“If you’re reading these words, perhaps it’s because something has kicked open the door for you, and you’re ready to embrace change. It isn’t enough to appreciate the change from afar, or only in the abstract, or as something that can happen to other people but not to you. We need to create change for ourselves, in a workable way, as part of our everyday lives.” ― Sharon Salzberg
“Sometimes it's possible, just barely possible, to imagine a version of this world different from the existing one, a world in which there is true justice, heroic honesty, a clear perception possessed by each individual about how to treat all the others. Sometimes I swear I could see it, glittering in the pavement, glowing between the words in a stranger's sentence, a green, impossible vision - the world as it was meant to be, like a mist around the world as it is.” ― Ben H. Winters
“I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.” ― Marshall McLuhan
“It was the challenge of life too, was it not? People could never be fully understood. They were ever-changing, different people at different times and under different circumstances and influences. And always growing, always creating themselves anew. How impossible it was to know another human being. How impossible to know even oneself.” ― Mary Balogh
“It's ok to be a fool once or twice but never let it be a third time. Be smart and pretend to be a fool and at the end of the hunt make sure you're the one that has the gun.” ― Surgeo Bell
“Why wait? So precious is this life—this gift—this temporary blindness. Burn and drown and embrace the false dark, then grasp the unthinkable height of resulting joy. For in the end, in the light of truth when the flesh is cast off, there is nothing but this.” ― Jennifer DeLucy
“Crying is like a thundershower for the soul. The air feels so wonderful after the rain. Don’t think too much. Breathe. Don’t be harsh or demanding on yourself. Just experience your feelings and know that your tears are announcing a change in your life. Change is coming; like a summer rain — to wash away your pain. Have faith that things are getting better.” ― Bryant McGill
“If the people of God were to transform the world through fascination, these amazing teachings had to work at the center of these peculiar people. Then we can look into the eyes of a centurion and see not a beast but a child of God, and then walk with that child a couple of miles. Look into the eyes of tax collectors as they sue you in court; see their poverty and give them your coat. Look into the eyes of the ones who are hardest for you to like, and see the One you love. For God loves good and bad people.” ― Shane Claiborne
“Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.” ― Grant Morrison
“It's so damn hard to bloom... to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it's hard. The desire to change isn't enough. Or desperation. Couldn't be done without... love.” ― Dean Koontz
“I have suggested that we can choose to regard the world as an interpretation of information provided by our senses, as opposed to a durable, external entity that will outlast us. If you’re focusing upon a description of the world, and you know it’s only a description, you can experiment with changing that description. This new view offers us a powerful choice of how to look at our lives.” ― Larry Gottlieb
“You have to remember that even if your business is new, your experience and expertise are not. You have spent many years mastering those skills and charging a price in reflection on those skills is not something you have to think twice about.” ― Pooja Agnihotri
“When people talk about loss, they always say you'll never be the same, that it will change you, leave a hole in your life. But when you lose somebody you love, you don't lose everything they gave you. They leave something with you.” ― Beth O'Leary
“No fire is ever the same fire. No Avatar is ever the same person. You and the flame change with every moment, every generation. You are one flame, and you are many.” ― F.C. Yee
“Bea felt a pang in her gut: Yes, she wanted to scream, I want this more than you could possibly imagine. But the idea of saying that out loud [...] felt terrifying. Like giving voice to this secret piece of herself would allow everyone in the world to tell her just how foolish she was for wanting something so laughably out of reach.” ― Kate Stayman-London
“Her father told her once that all animals were creatures of habit and so, too, were they. The difference was she could choose to change her habits. Animals changed when they were afraid. Change before feat has had a chance to overcome you, he said, or after you have overcome it and like a storm, it has moved on.” ― Andrew Krivak
“We have a tendency to become detached observers rather than participants. There might also be a sense of disassembling a complex, flowing process to focus on a small part of it. If we expand our focus to include emerging, one of the first changes we may notice is the bodily sense of being in the midst of something, of constant motion, lack of clarity (in the left-hemisphere sense), and unpredictability.” ― Bonnie Badenoch
“When I started out, all I knew was that I was not going to stay where I'd been. I was going to change. I was going to make my part of the world into something that I wanted–not wait, hope, or beg for the world to start to want me.” ― Jeff Mach
“At watershed moments of upheaval and transformation, we anticipate with terror the absence of the familiar parts of life and of ourselves that are being washed away by the current of change. But we fail to envision the unfamiliar gladness and gratifications the new tide would bring, the unfathomed presences, for our imaginations are bounded by our experience. The unknown awakens in us a reptilian dread that plays out with the same ferocity on scales personal, societal, and civilizational, whether triggered by a new life-chapter or a new political regime or a new world order.” ― Maria Popova
“You've done it before and you can do it now. See the positive possibilities. Redirect the substantial energy of your frustration and turn it into positive, effective, unstoppable determination.” ― Ralph Marston
“Just take any step, whether small or large. And then another and repeat day after day. It may take months, maybe years, but the path to success will become clear” ― Aaron Ross
“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.” ― Walter Mosley
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” ― Rob Siltanen
“Even if you cannot change all the people around you, you can change the people you choose to be around. Life is too short to waste your time on people who don’t respect, appreciate, and value you. Spend your life with people who make you smile, laugh, and feel loved.” ― Roy T. Bennett
“The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change.” ― Howard Zinn
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.” ― Paulo Coelho
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast. Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind. Be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.” ― Andy Warhol
“Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment helps us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments — but all of this is transitory it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.” ― Paulo Coelho
“This was when I learned that you have to give up your life as you know it to get a new one: that sometimes you need to let go of everything you're clinging to and start over, whether because you've outgrown it or because it's not working anymore, or because it was wrong for you in the first place.” ― Kelly Cutrone
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” ― Elizabeth Edwards
“Real change is difficult at the beginning. Without the familiar to rely upon, you may not in as much command as you had once been. When things are not going your way, you will start doubting yourself. Stay positive, keep the faith, and keep moving forward – your breakthrough may be just around the corner.” ― Roy T. Bennett
“There are things about ourselves that we need to get rid of; there are things we need to change. But at the same time, we do not need to be too desperate, too ruthless, or too combative. Along the way to usefulness and happiness, many of those things will change themselves, and the others can be worked on as we go. The first thing we need to do is recognize and trust our Inner Nature, and not lose sight of it.” ― Benjamin Hoff
“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?” ― Daniel Quinn
“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.” ― Anaïs Nin
“What if you could pick one day of your life, and everything would stop changing, every day would be similar and comparable to that one day, and you'd always have the same people with you? If you could do that, would you do it? Would you pick that day and make that choice? We crave for things to stop changing, we wish that things would never change. But if we got what we wanted, there are so many better things, that we would never, ever know about.” ― C. JoyBell C.
“All I could think about as I stood there was that sometimes life gave you a tragedy that burned everything you knew to the ground and changed you completely. But somehow, if you really wanted to, you could learn how to hold your breath as you made your way through the smoke left in its wake and you could keep going. And sometimes, you could grow something beautiful from the ashes that were left behind. If you were lucky.” ― Mariana Zapata
“We each have within ourselves the ability to shape our own destinies. That much we understand. But, more important, each of us has an equal ability to shape the destiny of the universe. Ah, that you find more difficult to believe. But I tell you it is so. You do not have to be the leader of the Council. You do not have to be king or monarch or the head of a clan to have a significant impact on the world around you. In the vastness of the ocean, is any drop of water greater than another? No, you answer, and neither has a single drop the ability to cause a tidal wave.” ― Margaret Weis
“Even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in light of it, we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.” ― Wendell Berry
“Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time when I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it. I told myself that if just one person could read it and have their hearts or minds changed, then I would've done something meaningful against a problem that often feels so much bigger than myself.” ― Tomi Adeyemi
“We exist where we begin, yet to remain there is death... I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself... I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her.” ― Becky Chambers
“In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis. We are at a crucial crossroads in the history of this nation--and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so.” ― Cornel West
“We must all work in harmony with each other to stand up for what is right, to speak up for what is fair, and to always voice any corrections so that the ignorant become informed and justice is never ignored. Every time a person allows an act of ignorance to happen, they delay our progress for true change. Every person, molecule, and thing matters. We become responsible for the actions of others the instant we become conscious of what they are doing wrong and fail to remind them of what is right.” ― Suzy Kassem
“God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder who laid the foundation of his house on the rock, we learn to let our knowledge of God change us.” ― Tyler Edwards
“All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And the truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great responsibility that it's best not to tell a story at all unless you know you can do it right. You must be very careful, or without knowing it you can change the world.” ― Vera Nazarian
“Men's lives are not progressions, as conventionally rendered in history paintings, nor are they a series of facts that may be enumerated & in their proper order understood. Rather they are a series of transformations, some immediate & shocking, some so slow as to be imperceptible, yet so complete & horrifying that at the end of his life a man may search his memory in vain for a moment of correspondence between his self in his dotage & him in his youth.” ― Richard Flanagan
“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.” ― James Baldwin
“This is where life as I knew it changed. This is where a new feeling slowly, eventually, permeated every cell of my body, changing the way I took in the world. My perceptions, opinions, everything changed the year I moved from Texas to Virginia.” ― Sharon E. Rainey
“Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn’t draw a lasting conclusion about oneself based on a brief experience of indigestion, one needn’t do so based on how one has thought or behaved for vast periods in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system—learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention—may radically transform one’s life.” ― Sam Harris
“To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of the mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing. Swamps and bogs are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs where organisms and ideas have the luxury of being out of the spotlight, where the imagination can mutate and mate, send tendrils into and out of the water.” ― Barbara Hurd
“Man doeth this and doeth that from the good or evil of his heart; but he knows not to what end his sense doth prompts him; for when he strikes he is blind to where the blow shall fall, nor can he count the airy threads that weave the web of circumstance. Good and evil, love and hate, night and day, sweet and bitter, man and woman, heaven above and the earth beneath--all those things are needful, one to the other, and who knows the end of each?” ― H. Rider Haggard
“I have decided that the hot, burning, inescapable pain is the worst. This pain comes when you pour everything into something, into someone, and they betray you so completely—so seemingly on a whim—that the pain crushes you and you feel as if you’re barely breathing, barely holding on to that small fraction of whatever is left inside of you begging you to go on, to not give up. - Tessa” ― Anna Todd
“Whenever I've made a choice in my life, a real choice... I can always feel the change after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach.” ― Kawai Strong Washburn
“Acceptance can transform but if you accept in order to transform, it is not acceptance. It is like loving. Love seeks no reward but when given freely comes back a hundredfold. He who loses his life finds it. He who accepts, changes.” ― Marsha M. Linehan
“Doors, he told her, are change, and change is a dangerous necessity. Doors are revolutions and upheavals, uncertainties and mysteries, axis points around which entire worlds can be turned.” ― Alix E. Harrow
“You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake… You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.” ― Warsan Shire
“There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After... I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured.” ― Justina Chen Headley
“How would your life be different if… You didn’t allow yourself to be defined by your past? Let today be the day… You stop letting your history interfere with your destiny and awaken to the opportunity to release your greatest self.” ― Steve Maraboli
“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.” ― Ray Bradbury
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.” ― Audre Lorde
“We are not going to change the whole world, but we can change ourselves and feel free as birds. We can be serene even amid calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. Serenity is contagious. If we smile at someone, he or she will smile back. And a smile costs nothing. We should plague everyone with joy. If we are to die in a minute, why not die happily, laughing?” ― Sri S. Satchidananda
“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently, it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.” ― Theodore J. Kaczynski
“The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp, and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves in the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh.” ― Hilary Mantel
“And she wept as well for the others lost in the Dark War, and she wept for her mother and the loss she had endured, and she wept for Simon and the hole in her heart where he had been, and she would miss him every day until she died, and she wept for herself and the changes that had been wrought in her, because sometimes even change for the better felt like a little death.” ― Cassandra Clare
“That’s a funny thing: you think, when awful things happen, everything else just stops, like you would forget to pee and eat and get thirsty, but it’s not really true. It’s like you and your body are two separate things, like your body is betraying you, chugging on, idiotic and animal, craving water and sandwiches and bathroom breaks while your world falls apart.” ― Lauren Oliver
“Edgar, there's a difference between missing him and wanting nothing to change," she said. "They aren't the same things at all. And we can't do anything about either one. Things always change. Things would be changing right now if your father were alive, Edgar. That's just life. You can fight it or you accept it. The only difference is, that if you accept it, you can get to do other things. If you fight it, you're stuck in the same spot forever.” ― David Wroblewski
“The same is true of the changes in respect for other cultures, rights of oppressed people, and so on. These are quite significant changes. If you compare the United States now to what it was, say, 35 years ago, the changes are quite dramatic. These are changes in popular consciousness that are quite deeply embedded.” ― Noam Chomsky
“There are a lot of fleeting moments in life, and it’s always those small encounters that touch the fucking core. It changes you in subtle yet apparent ways. There was before them, but after them will come with a fight to forget that little moment that change your entire life.” ― Nikki Rowe
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need for change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that has a huge variety of needs and dangers.” ― H.G. Wells
“So as a seventh-grader, no, you weren't friends with people you didn't like. But sometimes you also weren't friends with people you did like, which was complicated, and which didn't make any sense if you tried to explain it. Sometimes things just changed. That's where the sadness came in.” ― Lauren Myracle
“Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. Some painters follow the numbers, paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. Tom Peters, the corporate gadfly and writer, is an artist, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artist because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.” ― Seth Godin
“But sleep didn't come. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you, and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that.” ― Cassandra Clare
