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Quotes about change

166 quotes from 131 people

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Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made.
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
William Shakespeare1564–1616The Tempest (c. 1611), Act I, Scene II, spoken by ArielIn context
- Life & Death
A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598), Act II, Scene III, spoken by BenedickIn context
- Age
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw1856–1950Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #124
Nought may endure but Mutability.
Percy Bysshe Shelley1792–1822Mutability (1816), st. 4In context
The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit.
Bhagat Singh1907–1931Letter to the editor of The Modern Review, published in The Tribune (25 December 1929)
“Old” and “new” are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world.
Susan Sontag1933–2004Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
We are told we must choose — the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?
Susan Sontag1933–2004Frankfurt Book Fair speech (2003)
- Life & Death
One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (22 May 1925), published in Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up (1945)
- Age
Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.
Gloria Steinem1934–2026Moving Beyond Words (1994), Part 4: The Masculinization of Wealth, p. 196
- Art
The true wisdom is to be always seasonable, and to change with a good grace in changing circumstances.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
- Wisdom
It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.
PSPublilius Syrus101–101 BCSentences, Maxim 469
- Decisions
What is today supported by precedents will hereafter become a precedent.
Tacitus55–120Annals (117), Book XI, 24
- Laws
Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken with out developing new evils requiring new remedies.
William Howard Taft1857–1930Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916), P. 61.
I held it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Canto IIn context
- Character
We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. […] And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself?
Greta Thunbergborn 2003“You are stealing our future” (December 2018)