Quotes About Change

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure…. Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

What comes, will go. What is found, will be lost. But what you are is beyond coming and going and beyond description. You are this: The timeless-time

People tell stories all the time: the stories they want told, where any story could be changed or warped this way or that.

Like autumn leaves, bad days fell away as though the genius of the room could not retain them.

A society in which no one is willing to risk being called a troublemaker is a place where power is certain to be abused.

Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around," said the poet Adrienne Rich.

Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around

Alma: ¿Dónde está el oro aquel que viste? Todo ha cambiado cuando estuvo enfrente; mis ojos tocan realidad tan triste que digo: es el presente.

I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?"

The shell must break before the bird can fly.

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.

Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.

Don't ask the world to stop moving because you have doubts.

Reality is very stupid sometimes, and we ought to help it out a little.

I have come too late into a world too old.

Non ; cette fois j'ai gagé que je t'emmènerais ; allons, viens, mauvaise tête, et ne trouble le plaisir de personne. Chacun son tour ; c'était hier le tien, aujourd'hui tu es passé de mode ; celui qui ne sait pas se conformer à son sort est aussi fou qu'un vieillard qui fait le jeune homme.

Porte ta vie ailleurs, ô toi qui fus ma vie ; Verse ailleurs ce trésor que j'avais pour tout bien. Va chercher d'autres lieux, toi qui fus ma patrie, Va fleurir, ô soleil, ô ma belle chérie, Fais riche un autre amour et souviens-toi du mien.

Je commence à avoir trente ans, et je perds le talent de vivre.