This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Everything is connected …no one thing can change by itself." - Paul Hawken
"We must change in order to survive." - Pearl Bailey, fully Pearl Mae Bailey
"No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Art is the communication of ecstasy. All things change, nothing perishes." - P.D. Ouspensky, fully Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, also Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky
"Habits change into character." - P.D. Ouspensky, fully Peter Demianovich Ouspensky, also Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also Uspenskii or Uspensky
"You can change anything you want. You just can’t change everything you want." - Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
"Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed." - Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
"We must conclude that education is not what it is said to be by some, who profess to put into a soul knowledge that was not there before - rather as if they could but sight into blind eyes. On the contrary, our argument indicates that this is a capacity which is innate in each man’s soul, and that the faculty by which he learns is like an eye which cannot be turned from darkness to light unless the whole body is turned; in the same way the entire soul must be turned away from this world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and at the brightest of all realities which we have called the Good." - Plato NULL
"Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night." - Plato NULL
"In human life there is a constant change of fortune; and it is unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life itself decays, and all things are daily changing." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don't care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life any time he is ready and prepared to do it. Whenever he develops the desire, he can take away from his life the thing that is defeating it. The capacity for reformation and change lies within." - Preston Bradley
"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is no amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lose the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"The use of religion, psychoanalysis, or the mass media, as instruments by which people are helped to adjust to a dehumanizing social order without being challenged to change it, is essentially a betrayal of man." - Richard Shaull, fully Reverend M. Richard Shaull
"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. n." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." - Robert Frost
"Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." - Robert Frost
"We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
"Times don’t change. Men do." - Sam Levenson
"We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists except momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped." - Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
"The human species is forever in a state of change, forever becoming." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"This astonishing change in outlook has been brought about by assuming that, of all the elements of our total experience, only those elements which acquaint us with the quantitative aspects of material phenomona are concerned with the real world. They alone refer to an objective world. None of the other elements of our experience, our perception of colour, etc., our response to beauty, our sense of mystic communion with God, have objective counterparts. All these things, which are ultimately products of the motions of little particles, are illusory in the sense that they do not acquaint us with the nature of objective reality." - Arthur Eddington, fully Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
"The soul when using the body as an instrument of perception - that is to say, when using the sense of sigh and hearing, or some other sense - for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses - is dragged by the body through the region of the changeable (the temporal) and wanders about and is confused. The world spins round her. She is like a drunkard when she touches change... But when, returning into herself she reflects, then she passes into the region of Eternity." - Socrates NULL
"That realization of impermanence is paradoxically the only thing we can hold onto, perhaps our only lasting possession. It is like the sky, or the earth. No matter how much everything around us may change or collapse, they endure." - Sogyal Rinpoche
"To remain young one must change. The perpetual campus hero is not a young man but an old boy." - Stuart Alexander Chase
"Whoever would change men must change the conditions of their lives." - Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
"In the past we have admitted the right of the individual to injure the future of the Republic for his own present profit. In fact there has been a good deal of a demand for unrestricted individualism, for the right of the individual to injure the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit. The time has come for a change. As a people we have the right and the duty, second to moral law, of requiring and doing justice, to protect ourselves and our children against the wasteful development of our natural resources, whether that waste is caused by the actual destruction of such resources or by making them impossible of development hereafter." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"We seem to believe that our daily lives have nothing to do with the situation of the world. But if we do not change our daily lives, we cannot change the world. Drinking a cup of tea, picking up a newspaper, using toilet paper, all these things have to do with peace. Because nonviolence can be called awareness, we must be aware of what we are, of who we are, and of what we are doing." - Thich Nhất Hanh
"All religion is in the change from He to Thou. It is a mere abstraction as long as it is He. Only with the Thou we know God." - Thomas Erskine, aka Thomas Erskine of Linlathen
"Change of weather is the discourse of fools." - Thomas Fuller
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"The future is not law, only choice and change are law." - Tom Brown, Jr.
"Change demands self-discipline... Change requires the substituting of new habits for old. You mold your character and your future by your thoughts... Change can be realized through conscious evolution. Moment by moment, day by day, concentrate on becoming the man you want to be." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"Prayer does not change God, it changes us. It deepens insight, increases intuitive perceptions, expands consciousness. It transforms personality. Prayer opens doors to let in God and let out self, to let in love and let out hate, to let in faith and let out fear. Prayer helps us to find ourselves. By praying not to get more, but to be more, we discover a way to serve, a purpose for which to live, a dream to make real... Prayer is thinking and thanking. It is thinking of our many blessings and accepting them with a thankful spirit." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"Hate is death, forgiveness is life. Forgiveness works the miracle of change. When Lincoln was asked whey he did not destroy his enemies he replied: “If I make my enemies my friends, don’t I then destroy them?”... Forgiveness is the way to personal peace." - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward
"Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings." - William A. Ward, fully William Arthur Ward
"Assume a virtue, if you have it not. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, of habits devil, is angel yet in this, that to the use of actions fair and good he likewise gives a frock or livery that aptly is put on. Refrain tonight, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature. " - William Shakespeare
"Refrain to-night, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature." - William Shakespeare