Quotes about change

Few men confront the basic tenets of the society in which they live and try to change them. Very few of those are successful. And even fewer survive to reflect on their success. Henry IV was one of these very few.

Even in the face of superhuman machine intelligence, it can be tempting to imagine that the world will keep looking the way it has over the last few decades of our relatively short lives. It is true, but hard to remember, that there was a time is real as our own time, just a few short centuries ago, when civilization was radically different. Or millennia ago, when there was no civilization to speak of. Or a million years ago, when there were no humans. Or a billion years ago, when multicellular colonies had no specialized cells.

Adopting a historical perspective can help us appreciate what is so hard to see from the perspective of our own short lifespans: Nature permits disruption. Nature permits calamity. Nature permits the world to never be the same again.

Normality always ends. This is not to say that it’s inevitably replaced by something worse; sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes it depends on how we act. But clinging to the hope that nothing too bad will be allowed to happen does not usually help.

Throughout history, the really fundamental changes in societies have come about not from the dictates of governments and the results of battles, but through vast numbers of people changing their minds — sometimes only a little bit.

By deliberately changing the internal image of reality, people can change the world.

The implied accusation – of a U-turn or even of a turned coat – bothered me not at all. I had long since learned to ask John Maynard Keynes’s question: “When the facts change then my opinion changes: and you, sir?”

An adolescent act of defiance has now become a familiar form of virtue. 'Going with the flow' has become an imperative, a clear version of the good life. Change is sentimentally evoked in popular fictions. We 'change' to move on from tragedy or difficulty, we 'change' to overcome trauma, we are frequently told to accept 'change' as some perennial fact of life, the contemplation of which brings wisdom. Virtuous change is the ethic of the soap opera and the ne plus ultra of the advice column.

I woke the next morning knowing that nothing would be the same. It would change and go on changing.

Everything changed, and it went right on changing. A terrible thought when things were good, a comforting one now. Whatever happened, she could be certain that things wouldn’t stay the way they were now. And if she stayed smart and clever and lucky, she’d be able to affect how the next change came. Or take advantage of it.

Things changed, and they didn’t change back. But sometimes they got better.

Innovation and change: it was one of her key phrases, a mantra she liked to repeat. But it was empty. Ruth Ngema would go to great lengths to avoid any innovation or change, because who knew what might follow on?"

I’ve learnt to ask myself every day, Are you happy today? And if the answer is no I make a change.