Quotes About Change

Laws change; people die; the land remains.

I have an irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views…. I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

What is conservativism? Is it not the aherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

This is my life, I thought...I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?

Roses would be annoying weeds if the blooms never withered and died. Beauty resides in the knowledge that it doesn't last.

You can't walk across a lake just because you change its name to "land." Labels matter.

Apparently, Marx said that religion was the opium of the masses. It kept the oppressed from complaining or trying to change things.

happened has happened, be will be

Child, the past is past, and furthermore it's different every time I remember it.

Prison," I'd heard Ghosh laughingly tell Adid, "is the best thing for a marriage. If you can't send your spouse, then go yourself. It works wonders.

As if my past life was revealed to be a waste, a gesture in slow motion, because what I considered scarce and precious was in fact plentiful and cheap, and what I counted as rapid progress turned out to be glacially slow. The

Departure or imminent death will force you to define your true tastes.

there's no going back; time and water move on relentlessly.

People change, you know. When you leave your country, you are like a plant taken out of soil. Some people turn hard, they can't flower again.

The tide had turned, and the worst possible thing had happened: my heroes had become the "bad guys," and one didn't dare say otherwise.