Quotes About Change

In fact, whenever you must learn a new skill or alter your career path later in life, you reconnect with that youthful, adventurous part of yourself.

At a certain point, you can almost become a stranger to yourself.

The past often has elements worth appropriating, qualities that would be foolish to reject out of a need to distinguish yourself.... Making a display of doing things differently from your predecessor can make you seem childish and in fact out of control, unless your actions have a logic of their own.

Por esto, cuando he conseguido una victoria, no vuelvo a emplear la misma táctica otra vez, sino que, respondiendo a las circunstancias, varío mis métodos hasta el infinito. —Sun-tzu (siglo IV a.C.).

In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself. Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.

The matter does not appear to appear to me now as it appears to have appeared to me then.

This sort of talk always bores me: old men complaining that the world is going to the dogs. It's so banal.

Officially it was almost spring but someone had forgotten to pass the news on to winter.

The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.

There are no lasting victories in politics, there is only the remorseless grinding forward of events.

The old days of an inner circle of like-minded souls communicating with parchment and quill pens are gone. Sooner or later most things will be revealed.

How odd it is, thought March afterwards, to live your life in ignorance of the past, of your world, yourself. Yet how easy to do it! You went along from day to day, down paths other people had prepared for you, never raising your head - enfolded in their logic, from swaddling clothes to shroud. It was a kind of fear. Well, goodbye to that. And good to leave it behind - whatever happened now. - 214

siempre se puede decir una cosa de la política: jamás permanece estática. Si los buenos tiempos no duran eternamente, los malos tampoco.

old men complaining that the world is going to the dogs.

Legat was praying that Hartmann would be there. He was not sure what he could offer God in return, but it would be something, he promised Him—a different life, a fresh start, a gesture equal to the age.

There are few forces in politics harder to resist than a feeling that something is inevitable

She had the resigned indifference of extreme old age. Buildings and empires rose and fell. It snowed. It stopped snowing. People came and went. One day death would come for her, and she would not find that surprising either, and she would not care -

I make no claim to be a philosopher, but this much I have observed: that whenever a thing seems at its zenith, you may be sure its destruction has already started.

Com'è strano, pensò più tardi March, vivere la tua vita nell'ignoranza del passato, del tuo mondo, di te stesso. Eppure era così facile! Tiravi avanti giorno per giorno, seguendo il percorso che altri avevano tracciato per te, senza alzare mai la testa...sempre avvolto nella loro logica...dalla culla alla tomba. Era una sorta di paura. Bene, addio a tutto. Era una bella cosa lasciarselo alle spalle...qualunque cosa dovesse accadere adesso.

Sometimes,' he said, summing up the discussion with an aphorism I have never forgotten, 'if you find yourself stuck in politics, the thing to do is start a fight – start a fight, even if you do not know how you are going to win it, because it is only when a fight is on, and everything is in motion, that you can hope to see your way through.

Caesar is a different category of man altogether. Pompey merely wants to rule the world. Caesar longs to smash it to pieces and remake it in his own image.

sixth birthday?" asked Cicero. "He told me over dinner the other night: 'More people worship a rising than a setting sun.

Nothing has happened until it happens

So are you telling me… he composed his thoughts. Are you telling me that if you told the last story again, and changed the young woman to a young man, then somewhere in history that same young woman would suddenly grow a beard? Tallis laughed at the image. I don't know, she said. I suppose so.