Quotes on Change

Different Quotes on Change

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. ~Mary Engelbreit

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. ~W. Edwards Deming (Thanks, Michelle)

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ~Victor Frankl

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. ~Shunryu Suzuki

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble. ~Henry Miller

You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler. ~Denis Waitley

Change is inevitable — except from a vending machine. ~Robert C. Gallagher

If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change. ~John A. Simone, Sr.

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving

When you are through changing, you are through. ~Bruce Barton

Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith

What can we take on trust
in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride — nothing is secure, nothing keeps.
~Euripides, Hecuba



They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius

Change always comes bearing gifts. ~Price Pritchett

The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions. ~Ellen Glasgow

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post

Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864

Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed. ~Irene Peter

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~Faith Baldwin

The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~William H. Seward

The birds are molting. If only man could molt also — his mind once a year its errors, his heart once a year its useless passions. ~James Allen

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Mutability”

You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them. ~Marcel Proust

Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman

If nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed. ~George Carlin

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. ~Lynn Hall

Change may come to you in trinkets and I hope it adorns your life gracefully. ~Dodinsky

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. ~Henri Bergson

For either or both ways all minds are always,
Morning and noon and night, sleeping and waking,
Summer and winter, always always changing…
~James Henry, “Love,” 1855 December 26th

The wheel of change moves on, and those who were down go up and those who were up go down. ~Jawaharlal Nehru

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960


We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~W.H. Auden

Those who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott

You never have a friend all figured out. Just when you think you know what makes them tick, they tock. ~Robert Brault

All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow

Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide

If you want to make enemies, try to change something. ~Woodrow Wilson

After you’ve done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over. ~Alfred Edward Perlman, New York Times, 3 July 1958

Continuity gives us roots; change gives us branches, letting us stretch and grow and reach new heights. ~Pauline R. Kezer

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it. ~John Steinbeck, America and Americans

Few can accept happiness if it means change. We want the life we have now, only happier. ~Robert Brault

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. ~John Ciardi

Little stones that are pelted into the lake of consciousness should not throw the whole lake into commotion. ~Paramahansa Yogananda, God Talks With Arjuna

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb

Everything comes to pass, nothing comes to stay. ~Matthew Flickstein

The devil could change. He was once an angel and may be evolving still. ~Laurence J. Peter

Nothing that is can pause or stay;
The moon will wax, the moon will wane,
The mist and cloud will turn to rain,
The rain to mist and cloud again,
Tomorrow be today.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight. ~Ezra Pound

Every beginning is a consequence — every beginning ends some thing. ~Paul Valery

It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966

People don’t change. Only their costumes do. ~Gene Moore

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me. ~Author Unknown

She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened. ~Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance. ~Harrison Ford

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

No two men ever judged alike of the same thing, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly similar, not only in different men but in the same men at different times. ~Michel Montaigne

If you want to truly understand something, try to change it. ~Kurt Lewin

Every single thing changes and is changing always in this world. Yet with the same light the moon goes on shining. ~Saigyo

Things do not change; we change. ~Henry David Thoreau

Our only security is our ability to change. ~John Lilly

Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. ~Bertold Brecht

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. ~Francis Bacon, “On Innovation,” Essays, 1597

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon

A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar. ~Confucius, Analects

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the mercury in the barometer, indicate nothing but the changeableness of the weather. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. ~Stanislaw Lec