Quotes About Change

What has habit been doing to me?

B.F. Skinner, the world-famous psychologist, proved through his experiments that an animal rewarded for good behaviour will learn much more rapidly and retain what it learns far more effectively than an animal punished for bad behaviour. Later studies have shown that the same applies to humans. By criticising, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

I have known people," he said, "who succeeded because they had a rip-roaring good time conducting their business. Later, I saw those people change as the fun became work. The business had grown dull.

When we attempt to use criticism to win an argument, to make a point, or to incite change, we are taking two steps backward.

God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can; And the wisdom to know the difference

Hay una divinidad que forja nuestros fines, por mucho que queramos alterarlos.

Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in favour of it. But why not begin on yourself?

If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?

To leave the road of continual failure, a person must first utter the three most difficult words to say: 'I was wrong.

By criticizing, we do not make lasting changes and often incur resentment.

William James tells us that we cannot instantly change our emotions just by making up our minds to-but that we can change our actions. And that when we change our actions, we will automatically change our feelings.

Por medio de la crítica nunca provocamos cambios duraderos, y con frecuencia creamos resentimientos

20,000 Years in Sing Sing

we cannot instantly change our emotions just by "making up our minds to" but that we can change our actions. And that when we change our actions, we will automatically change our feelings.

but in the beginning, she was—well, susceptible to improvement.

The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

At best, the natural good-nature is edged with complaint or has changed into sullenness and gloom. And now and then it blazes forth in veiled but hot anger.

Golden apples are beautiful–I remember the lawless days of boyhood, when orchards in crimson and gold tempted me over fence and field–and, too, the merchant who has dethroned the planter is no despicable parvenu.

Comrade, you and I can never be satisfied with sitting down before a great human problem and saying nothing can be done. We must do something. That is the reason we are here on Earth.

The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism.

In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly.

That the present social separation and acute race-sensitiveness must eventually yield to the influences of culture, as the South grows civilized, is clear.

the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

You had better—all you people of the South— prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you commence that preparation, the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily—I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled— this Negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet.