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973 quotes from 439 people

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Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.
H. P. Lovecraft1890–1937The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Political Ideals (1917)
- Change
- Hope
Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.
Erich Fromm1900–1980The Art of Loving (1956), Ch. 2
So the pendulum swings, now violently, now slowly; and every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.
William Ralph Inge1860–1954“Democracy and the Future” The Atlantic Monthly (March 1922)
- Change
- History
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Robert F. Kennedy1925–1968Day of Affirmation Address, University of Cape Town (6 June 1966)
- Change
- History
The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological — technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science.
Stephen Hawking1942–2018From Hawking’s article A Brief History of Relativity, in Time magazine (31 December 1999)
The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good? The good is no longer even being measured.
Hannah Arendt1906–1975Interview with French writer Roger Errera in New York Review of Books (1974)
- Change
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), 1929, p. 1
A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.
Henry James1843–1916“Robert Louis Stevenson,” Century Magazine (April 1888)
- Change
When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion.
Philip K. Dick1928–1982Lies, Inc. (1984)
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992Foundation (1951), Part III, The Mayors, section 2
There is in the worst of fortune the best of chances for a happy change.
Euripides481–407 BCIphigenia in Tauris, ll. 721–722 (Bartlett’s, 1892)
- Change
- Luck
To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
Victor Hugo1802–1885Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-Three) (1874), Book VII, Chapter V
Skill is a function of chance. It’s an intuitive best-use of chance situations.
Philip K. Dick1928–1982Solar Lottery (1955), Chapter 5 (p. 60)
- Luck
Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.
Martin Amis1949–2023“First Lady on Trial” The Sunday Times [London] (17 March 1996) (Online text in PDF format)