Great Throughts Treasury

"No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought." - John Stuart Mill

"We resonate with one another’s sorrows because we are inter-connected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves." - Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense." - Joseph Addison

"There are two kinds of fools; those who can't change their opinions and those who won't." - Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek

"The will of humanity cannot change the will of God." - Kahlil Gibran

"The philosophers have interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." - Karl Marx

"A person needs at intervals to separate himself from his family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influences, to change." - Katharine Butler Hathaway

"You can’t change the music of your soul." -

"If you want to truly understand something, try to change it." - Kurt Lewin

"Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going." - Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter

"You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change." - Les Brown

"At moments of crisis, where the roads to disintegration or to development separate, as on a watershed, a single decisive personality, or a small group of informed and purposeful men, may be a slight push determine the direction and movement of an otherwise uncontrollable mass of conflicting social forces… Only within the compass of the person can a total change be affected within the span of a single generation, sufficient to produce the necessary effect on civilization at large: like the seed crystal, he passes on to the whole new order of the part." - Lewis Mumford

"What is any established institution but a Society for the Prevention of Change?" - Lewis Mumford

"All things are changed, and we change with them." - Lothair I, aka Lotharius I, "Emperor of the West" NULL

"It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while." - Luther Burbank

"In a nation of millions and a world of billions, the individual is still the first and basic agent of change." -

"He who is everlasting, constant and in no way subject to change; immutable in his essence, and as he consists of nothing but his essence, he is mutable in no way whatsoever." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"Things don't change, but by and by our wishes change." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust

"Every part of me will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on, forever. And by consequence of such a change, I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the other direction." -

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

"If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time."" - Marian Wright Edelman

"You really can change the world if you care enough" - Marian Wright Edelman

"Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it." -

"Emotions and actions do not usually follow adversity directly. Rather, they issue directly from your beliefs about adversity. This means that if you change your mental response to adversity, you can cope with setbacks much better." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman

"Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all." - Mason Cooley

"Change doth unknit the tranquil strength of men." - Matthew Arnold

"Time does not change us. It just unfolds us." - Max Frisch

"Our self image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other." - Maxwell Maltz

"Acting and becoming are one. God and I are one in this work: He acts and I become. Fire transforms all things it touches into its own nature. The wood does not change the fire itself, but the fire changes the wood into itself. In the same way we are transformed into God so that we may know him as he is." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror. I'm asking him to change his ways. And no message could have been any clearer: If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change." - Michael Jackson, fully Michael Joseph Jackson, aka MJ or King of Pop

"Though the ethical challenges we face in the workplace may be different from those in our personal lives, the principles of ethical conduct that apply to those challenges do not change. There is no such thing as business ethics - there is only ethics." - Michael S. Josephson

"Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and working actively to change the evidence." - Michael Toms

"There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. For instance, feeling secure is an important component of happiness... risks are inevitable." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály

"It was long ago observed that `rites of passage’ play a considerable part in the life of religious man. Certainly, the outstanding passage rite is represented by the puberty initiation, passage from one age group to another (from childhood or adolescence to youth). But there is also a passage rite at birth, at marriage, at death, and it could gbe said that each of these cases always involves an initiation, for each of them implies a radical change in ontological and social status." - Mircea Eliade

"I had few really definite ideas, and the reason for this was that, instead of obstinately seeking to control circumstances, I obeyed them, and they forced me to change my mind all the time." -

"Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

"It's true that things like violence and rotten schools are destroying the cities - but they're destroying them because of a social structure that we've got to change, from the bottom up." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky

"Consider! Behind you lie the confusions and inadequacies of that remarkably over-rated period of human existence known as youth. Youth has vitality, its true; youth has a superabundance of “free energy.” But it has little else. It lacks poise. It lacks experience. Above all, it has neither judgment nor wisdom, the two qualities which make life supremely worth while... the rewards of self-knowledge are enormous... self-knowledge is the key to self-mastery... Calm, assured, integrated people have a way of making considerable impact on reality. By changing themselves, they change the world around them." - Norman Vincent Peale

"Change your thoughts and you change your world." - Norman Vincent Peale

"Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy." - Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano

"Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two." - Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano

"Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills

"All things change, nothing perishes." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

"Habits change into character." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

"All things change, but nothing dies." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

"Habits are nothing but repetitions of your own thoughts, and these you have the capacity to change." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"No matter what his present state, man can change for the better through self-control, discipline, and following proper diet and health laws. Why do you think you cannot change? Mental laziness is the secret cause of all weakness." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"At death, you forget all the limitations of the physical body, and realize how free you are... You exist apart from the mortal body... There is nothing to fear. When death comes, laugh at it. Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die. Our real self, the soul, is immortal. We may sleep for a little while in that change called death, but we can never be destroyed. We exist, and that existence is eternal... Nothing can terminate the eternal consciousness." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"Change your thoughts if you wish to change your circumstances. Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

"The greatest influence in your life, stronger even than your will power, is your environment. Change that, if necessary. There are two kinds of environment that you should watch carefully - the outer and the inner." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh