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Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.
John Updike1932–2009The New Yorker (30 July 1990)
- Art
- Change
I am proud to have been in a business that gives pleasure, creates beauty, and awakens our conscience, arouses compassion, and perhaps most importantly, gives millions a respite from our so violent world.
Audrey Hepburn1929–1993Statement accepting the Screen Actors Guild Achievement Award, read by Julia Roberts, because of Hepburn’s failing health. (January 1993)
- Entertainment
- Movies
It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once.
Thomas Paine1737–1809First Principles of Government (1795)
- Change
- Truth & Lies
Learn fortitude and toil from me, my son,
Ache of true toil. Good fortune learn from others.
Virgil70–19 BCAeneid (29–19 BC), Book XII, Lines 435–436 (tr. Robert Fitzgerald)
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)
- Change
Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Mark Carneyborn 1965Speech at WEF, Davos (January 20, 2026)
- Change
We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.
Mark Carneyborn 1965Speech at WEF, Davos (January 20, 2026)
- Change
We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
- Change
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche, Frankfurt (25 June 1963)
- Change
- Time
What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
Jack Kerouac1922–1969On the Road (1957), Part Two, Ch. 8
- Change
- Life & Death
The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882The Conservative (1841)
- Change
- Politics
The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Divinity College Address (1838), p. 6
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Thing (1929), Ch. IV: “The Drift From Domesticity”
- Change
- Wisdom
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Lines 129 ff.In context
Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Spectator (1711–1714), No. 1 (1 March 1711)