Quotes about change

A change of scene is good for a change of mind.

Listens-To-Wind "Injun Joe": There is world that should be, and the world that is. We live in one.

Ebenezer: And must create the other, if it is ever to be.

“Governments don’t change things,” she said. “Only time does that.”

It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age.

Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.

It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.

Why are they [people] more likely to listen to people who tell them they can't make changes than they are to people who tell them they can?

"The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge."

She could only realize that she herself — her present self — was in some way different from the other self. That she was seeing with different eyes.

I can't make people change, and I can't change myself. I can't change the political climate, or fix the myriad problems of the world, or make anyone else happy. When I think about these things, I feel impotent and sad. When I don't think about them, I am running away from the truth. Either way I lose.

"Well," said Dr Jochum, "you are like all reformers. You like to reform the world because it is easier than trying to reform yourself."

You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank, from putting yourself?