Quotes About Change

Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired.

It seems to be a law of design that for every advantage introduced through redesign, there is an accompanying unintended disadvantage.

Conservatives tend to be very skeptical of change. When something could be improved, they often get in the way of those improvements because they fear the unintended consequence perhaps more than they should.

The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.

The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me - I've never paid much attention to it. I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president. Nothing really gets resolved. I don't know. I guess that's not the right attitude to take.

I campaigned for the UK to stay in the European Union but the country chose a different path.

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.

Indeed, our British friends have decided to leave us - which is very sad for all of us - but life goes on, and the European Union as well goes on.

Society may no longer define marriage in the only way marriage has ever been defined in the annals of recorded history. Many societies allowed polygamy, many allowed child marriages, some allowed marriage within families; but none, in thousands of years, defined marriage as the union of people of the same sex.

Without Jimmy Carter we might not have gotten Ronald Reagan, without Ronald Reagan there would probably still be a Soviet Union.

In 1996, Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over in the State of the Union address.

Let me be absolutely clear: I think it is defeatist to sort of say we want to leave the European Union. We're going to try and change the rules and change the way it works and change the objectives that it has in order to make it something that works for Britain.

The great increase of our population throughout the Union will alone produce an important effect, and in no quarter will it be so sensibly felt as in those in contemplation.

I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan.

I've said very clearly, including in a State of the Union address, that I'm against 'don't ask, don't tell' and that we're going to end this policy.

Empires will come and go. The Soviet Union collapses; China can become a superpower, but 'Blue Peter' stays the same.

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers - and new threats.

In 1972, I signed a union card for SEIU. And for the last 38 years, 14 as president, it's been my life. I've seen the most miraculous, spectacular things. But there's a time to learn, a time to lead and a time to leave.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

We will do everything to change what needs to be changed, fight against recession so that the country meets its targets, while reinforcing our country in the heart of the euro and the European Union.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought the last Soviet generation was going to be the great hope for democracy. When that failed, their hopes shifted to the first post-Soviet generation, and then the second one.

At its best, American music is the soundtrack of our long - and often painful - march toward a more perfect union.

I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom.

The heart of the matter is that the very nature of the European Union, and of this country's relationship with it, has fundamentally changed after the coming into being of the European monetary union and the creation of the eurozone, of which - quite rightly - we are not a part.