Quotes About Change

Consider these words from Lech Wa??sa: In the past, you could stand with a gun behind a man who had a pick and a spade and tell him to dig a hole two hundred meters long. But you can't put a man behind someone working creatively, behind a computer, and tell him, "Please devise something original." There is no way to do it

History does repeat itself, but must it do so so frequently?

Regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think they're no longer alone.

There are many things which cannot be imagined," the Chinese say, "but there is nothing which may not happen.

For China, yesterday poisons today and robs tomorrow.

The Maoist mechanisms of social control have been loosened. A totalitarian state has become merely an authoritarian one.

we should listen to Leon Trotsky. "Revolution is impossible until it is inevitable," he told us.

The students who surrendered the square on the morning of June 4 could not begin to imagine, in those sad days of 1989, that their ideas would eventually prevail. They set into motion a chain of events that will one day lead to a free and prosperous China, one better than they could, at that time, imagine—perhaps one better than we can imagine today.

Don't think of it as losing a boyfriend. Think of it as gaining a stalker." -Dan Cahill

Gordon Lewis

I try to keep it light and positive most of the time, whereas earlier on I didn't always do that.

To be happy is to take the risk of losing that happiness.

The stories of our lives, far from being fixed narratives, are under constant revision. The slender threads of causality are rewoven and reinterpreted as we attempt to explain to ourselves and others how we became the people we are.

Finally, if the person I'm talking to appears wedded determinedly to the past and unwilling to contemplate a better future, I grow impatient. It is misplaced kindness to offer only sympathy, even where it is clearly justified. It is hope that I'm really selling. If, after extended effort, I cannot persuade someone to buy, I am wasting both our time by continuing.

Only bad things happen quickly, . . . Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life's primary virtues.

Now when I say let go, I do not mean reject. Because when you let go of something, it will still be there for you when you need it. But because you have stopped clinging you will have freed yourself up to tap into other possibilities - possibilities that can help you deal with this world of accelerating change.

The escape from habitual culture must always be temporary if you expect to be permitted back into that culture.

The technology at the leading edge changes so rapidly that you have to keep current after you get out of school. I think probably the most important thing is having good fundamentals.

More blood's been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.

they're blinded by the limited focus of their attitudes toward time and history. They only look as far as their own lifetime. No, they don't even look that far. They only look at how things are for their own generation.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we're alive it's not going to change. You've got to be boisterous to get results.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we're alive it's not going to change. You've got to be boisterous to get results. Gordon Ramsay

History is the queen of the humanities. It teaches wisdom and humility, and it tells us how things change through time.

In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.