This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We are here to change the world with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily rather than with one great breakthrough." - Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner
"Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"Ideas leave not their source. Change your mind about yourself and healing will follow." - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"All appears to change when we change. " - Henri Frédéric Amiel
" The church is a vast institution with roots reaching wide and deep into the social order that now is. It is so integral to society as a whole that any social reconstruction would mean a reconstruction of the church. It would have to reconstruct itself in order to reconstruct society. But it cannot reconstruct itself until society is reconstructed. So it is caught in a vicious circle so far as concerns leadership in achieving any change in the basic institutions of society." - Henry Nelson Wieman
"The faculty of art is to change events; the faculty of science is to foresee them. The phenomena with which we deal are controlled by art; they are predicted by science. " - Henry Thomas Buckle
"Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season." - Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
"Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter." - Herbert Spencer
"Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. " - Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
"At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people." - Howard Dean
"We are natural mind changing entities until we are 10 or so. But as we get older…then it is very hard to change our minds" - Howard Gardner, fully Howard Earl Gardner
"History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place." - Howard Zinn
"There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more. But there is also the bubbling of change under the surface of obedience: the growing revulsion against endless wars, the insistence of women all over the world that they will no longer tolerate abuse and subordination… There is civil disobedience against the military machine, protest against police brutality directed especially at people of color." - Howard Zinn
"The way of the creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the great harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres." - I Ching, Book of Changes or Zhouyi NULL
"The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is a most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvellous; but that never happens." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Society in which we live, we have created, we are responsible for it - each one of us. It has not come into being because of some fictitious, spiritual forces. It has come about through our greed, through our ambition, through our personal likes and dislikes and enmities, through our frustrations, through our search for pleasure and satisfaction. We have created the religions, the beliefs, the dogmas, out of fear. It is in that society that you live. Either you run away from that society because you cannot understand it, or cannot bring about a change in that society of which you are a part; or you become so completely engrossed in your own particular travail that you lose complete interest in the radical demand of a human mind that says that it must change." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"As an individual, it is your responsibility to bring about a tremendous change in the world. It is your responsibility because you are part of this society, because you are part of this tremendous sorrow of man, this constant effort, struggle, pain, and anxiety. You are responsible. Unless you realize that immense responsibility and come directly in contact with that responsibility and listen to the whole structure, the machinery of that responsibility, do what you will - go to every temple, to every guru, to every Master, to every religious book in the world - your action has no meaning whatsoever because those are mere escapes from actuality." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"To bring about a total change of man, man has to become aware of himself - that is, he has to learn about himself anew. Man, according to the recent discoveries of anthropology, has lived for two million years; and man has not found a way out of his misery. He has escaped from it, he has run away through some fanciful illusion. But he has not found it, has not built a society that is totally free; he has not built a society which is not a society of conformity." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The collective mind is your mind, you are part of the culture in which you have been brought up, in which you have been educated, you're not separate from the society, from the world, so, unless you as a human being radically change there is very little hope for a peaceful, religious society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Triumph belongs to thought. Change your thiking and you change your life. " - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
"Thought is a tremendous force in the life of any individual. Thoughts shape our attitudes. Attitudes mould our character. Character influences our life. By changing our thought pattern, we can change our life." - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
"Don't manage - lead change before you have to. " - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it." - James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
"We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently." - James Hillman
"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges." -
"It is the responsibility of free men to trust and to celebrate what is constant - birth, struggle, and death are constant - and so is love, though we may not always think so - and to apprehend the nature of change, to be able and willing to change. I speak of change not on the surface but in the depths - change in the sense of renewal. But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not - safety, for example, or money or power. One clings then to chimeras, but which one can only be betrayed, and the entire hope - the entire possibility - of freedom disappears. " - James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
"And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there is an awakening of understanding and compassion, and understanding that reaches out to help the suffering animals in their vanishing homelands. That embraces hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need. And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals, the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings." - Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
"Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don't change." - Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
"The resources of the Deity cannot be so meagre, that, in order to create a human being endowed with reason, he must change a monkey into a man. " - Louis Agassiz, fully Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
"A change in bad habits leads to a change in life. " - Jenny Craig, born Genevieve Guidroz
"There is never a conflict with person or condition, but rather a false concept mentally entertanied “about” person, thing or condition. Therefore make the correction within yourself, rather than attempting to change anyone or anything in the without. " - Joel S. Goldsmith, fully Joel Solomon Goldsmith
"Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought... The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it... Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts. When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food... Clean thoughts make clean habits." - James Allen
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." - John Dewey
"What you keep by you, you may change and mend; But words once spoke can never be recall'd." - John Dickinson, pen name Fabius
"A successful future for America depends on the meaning we attach to being citizens of the same republic--a meaning shattered every time the left questions the intelligence of their opponents and the right questions the patriotism of those who don’t share their views. That success also will be measured by the depth of our commitment to each other—a commitment that begins in our neighborhoods and PTAs and town councils and swells upward from there. Our success rest on the shape and power of our vision--how can we pursue “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” when the nation is a battleground of uncompromising ideas and ideologies? We need to change what’s in our minds but above all we need to change what’s in our hearts." - John Graham
"No one is more truly helpless, more completely a victim, than he who can neither choose nor change nor escape his protectors." - John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
"'Tis often constancy to change the mind." - John Hoole
"Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world. " - John Milton
"Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms." - John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
"The most powerful agent of growth and transformation is something much more basic than any technique: a change of heart." - John Welwood
"Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be." - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"Although there is no progress without change, not all change is progress." - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"In scientific thought we adopt the simplest theory which will explain all the facts under consideration and enable us to predict new facts of the same kind. The catch in this criterion lies in the world "simplest." It is really an aesthetic canon such as we find implicit in our criticisms of poetry or painting. The layman finds such a law as dx/dt = K(d^2x/dy^2) much less simple than "it oozes," of which it is the mathematical statement. The physicist reverses this judgment, and his statement is certainly the more fruitful of the two, so far as prediction is concerned. It is, however, a statement about something very unfamiliar to the plain man, namely, the rate of change of a rate of change." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you’re likely to end up where you’re heading." - John C. Maxwell
"People change when they hurt enough that they have to, learn enough that they want to, or receive enough that they are able to. " - John C. Maxwell
"If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near" - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"Seven Point Program for Management by Leadership: 1. Develop a vision for the business. 2. Change the culture to achieve the vision. 3. Flatten the organization. 4. Eliminate bureaucracy. 5. Empower individuals. 6. Raise quality and efficiency. 7. Eliminate boundaries. " - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"25 Lessons: Lead More, Manage Less 1. Lead. 2. Manage less. 3. Articulate your vision. 4. Simplify. 5. Get less formal. 6. Energize others. 7. Face reality. 8. See change as an opportunity. 9. Get good ideas from everywhere. 10. Follow up. Build a Winning Organization. 11. Get rid of bureaucracy. 12. Eliminate boundaries. 13. Put values first. 14. Cultivate leaders. 15. Create learning culture. Harness Your People 16. Involve everyone. 17. Make everybody a team player. 18. Stretch. 19. Instill confidence. 20. Make business fun. Build the Market-Leading Company 21. Be number 1 or number 2 22. Live quality. 23. Constantly focus on innovation. 24. Live speed. 25. Behave like a small company." - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them. " - John Henry Newman