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
The title said, “156 Quotes.” That’s about 150 too many, BP! 🤣🤦🏽♀️
The title said, “156 Quotes.” That’s about 150 too many, BP! 🤣🤦🏽♀️