Quotes About Change

you enter a state of affairs in which neither the old ways nor the new ways work satisfactorily. People are caught between the demands of conflicting systems and end up immobilized

What the neutral zone is and why it exists can be seen in figure 4.1. It is a time when all the old clarities break down and everything is in flux. Things are up in the air. Nothing is a given anymore, and anything could happen. No one knows the answers: one person says one thing and someone else says something completely different.

The first thing you're going to need in order to handle nonstop organizational change is an overall design within which the various and separate changes are integrated as component elements. In periods of major strategic change, such a design may have been announced to the organization by its leadership. When that happens, you're fortunate. Even if you don't entirely agree with the logic of the larger change, you benefit from the coherence it gives to the component changes.

Old weaknesses, previously patched over or compensated for, reemerge in full flower.

Whether you do it this way or in some other way, you have to find a few larger patterns that integrate and make sense out of all of the specific changes.

A corollary to this idea is that the past, which people are likely to idealize during an ending

But immune systems carry a price tag: even good germs get filtered out or killed off. The pre-transition immune system choked off creativity in its own manner, and no matter how loose and free the post-transition way of doing things is, its immune system will also make creativity difficult in some different way. It is during the gap between the old and the new that the organization's immune system is weak enough to let a seedbed for novelty form.

There is no season such delight can bring As summer, autumn, winter and the spring.

The euphoria of quitting a bad job was rivaled only by good sex.

Every day the sun will rise and you never know what the tide will bring in. -Tom Hanks, in the movie 'Castaway'.

So now I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. And tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide will bring in.

Tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring...

every civilization reaches a still point. The progressives can't go forward, and the conservatives can't go back. One demands continual advance, the other longs for yesterday.

transformation of your mind

I pray—for fashion's word is outAnd prayer comes round again—That I may seem, though I die old,A foolish, passionate man.

That toil of growing up;The ignominy of boyhood; the distressOf boyhood changing into man;The unfinished man and his pain.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

I knew a phoenix in my youth, so let them have their day.

O but we dreamed to mendWhatever mischief seemedTo afflict mankind, but nowThat winds of winter blowLearn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

I heard the old, old men say,"All that's beautiful drifts awayLike the waters."

Much did I rage when young,Being by the world oppressed,But now with flattering tongueIt speeds the parting guest.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else. Ralph Waldo Emerson American essayist, lecturer and poet (1803-1882)

I kiss you and kiss you, With arms around my own, Ah, how shall I miss you, When, dear, you have grown.

THOUGH you are in your shining days, Voices among the crowd And new friends busy with your praise, Be not unkind or proud, But think about old friends the most: Time's bitter flood will rise, Your beauty perish and be lost For all eyes but these eyes.