Quotes About Change

I wanted to write an upbeat song where I could feel good about the fact that I've moved around so much and not sad about all the goodbyes I've had to face.

It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going, and that's a famous story, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

When I arrived in America, I experienced serious culture shock. For someone with a religious upbringing, the 1960s were an extremely difficult time. Even though religion was a big part of the civil rights and peace movements, in my college religion was treated as irrelevant, hopelessly stodgy, and behind the times.

I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.

We were constantly moving to different countries and adjusting to new things. It was such a free feeling. I'm glad I didn't have a traditional upbringing.

I had to train myself to like spicy foods as I got older because they weren't a part of my upbringing at all.

I look at old photos of me, and I don't feel connected to them at all. I would never wish my upbringing on anyone... but I wouldn't take it back for the world.

The truth is that all civic and social change is friction. Politics is friction. The only way you can bend the arc of history is to create that kind of friction, which is something that makes most people incredibly uncomfortable but which, for whatever reason, because of my upbringing or because of my genetics, is something that doesn't bug me.

In the summer of 2009, in the wake of a crisis in her life, my mother moved from San Diego to San Francisco to live with my 16-year-old daughter and me. My mother was 77. I was 51. Despite a chorus of skepticism from friends - who knew about my upbringing - I was determined to do what I could to help my mother.

What I know is that my upbringing was always the man was the head of the family. It's a European tradition. We always look up to the man. But this is old times. Now what I believe is that I'm definitely equal.

We moved around a lot when I was growing up. I was always the new kid in class, but I was good at making friends. With an upbringing like that, I was either going to become an actor or a politician. Thank God I became an actor! I'm not cut out for politics.

I don't want to keep talking about my upbringing because people always resort to the past and what happened when I was younger.

While I loved aspects of the law, my upbringing had shown me that in politics, you could make policy decisions that actually changed people's lives - so I made my decision, and ran for my father's old seat.

Where I come from, the family, upbringing, whatever I have seen in life, I know for sure that nothing is permanent.

Given the rapid rate of change, the old paradigm of one-off education followed by a career will no longer work: life-long learning is a must, and it is up to governments and employers to invest in training and for employees to commit to constantly update their skill set.

We don't need to update the paper through the night, so we don't need so many people working anti-social hours producing a newspaper for real-time news. That's the equivalent of the steam age.

Where did the inspiring Obama of the campaign go, that Facebook pied piper who friended the whole world with this update: 'Change you can believe in.' What happened to him?

I expect nothing from the government but I expect everything from people. There is a need to update ourselves, our values and lifestyle.

The rules changed for art around 1989. We were all loosed upon the canon to clip and paste and borrow and update. Only thing is, unless you were in New York or in a cultural studies program, that new paradigm probably wasn't going to sink in until the Internet arrived.

You can re-interpret the past. Tradition can always be updated. But it is wrong to say 'throw it out.'

You have to stay updated on trends, social things and pop culture, you need to stay with the times and keep evolving.

You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it into yourself, then the updated 'you' makes more decisions, and so forth, 'round and 'round.

France will insist on the need for updated and responsive institutions.

My parents really wanted me to have an arranged marriage when I was younger, but I think they have updated a bit with the times.