Thanos may not be inevitable (thanks to Ironman), but change is, surely, inevitable. There are moments when change hits you like a ton of bricks… as when a pandemic sweeps the globe, and everything is suddenly different. There is, however, always a silver lining in the face of such a dramatic and undesirable change. Check out these inspirational quotes about change to help you see the bright side of things.
Inspirational Quotes About Change
“A bend in the road is not the end of the road… Unless you fail to make the turn.”
Helen Keller
“Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.”
Bob Dylan
“All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.”
Calvin Coolidge
“All is flux, nothing stays still.”
Plato
“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.”
Virginia Woolf
“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
Libba Bray
“Anger, resentment and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others– it only changes yours.”
Shannon Alder
“Anyone can stay the same. It takes courage to change.”
John Assaraf
“Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”
Alain de Botton
“Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing. Once you’ve changed, other things start to follow. Isn’t that the way it works?”
Diane Duane
“Bending beats breaking.”
Betty Greene
“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”
J.D. Salinger
“Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.”
Seth Godin
“Change begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Roy T. Bennett
“Change brings opportunity.”
Nido Qubein
“Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities – to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.”
Klaus Schwab
“Change is growth. For me it has been a very spiritual and musical rebirth.”
Lenny Kravitz
“Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.”
Robin Sharma
“Change is inevitable in life. You can either resist it and potentially get run over by it, or you can choose to cooperate with it, adapt to it, and learn how to benefit from it. When you embrace change you will begin to see it as an opportunity for growth.”
Jack Canfield
“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
John C. Maxwell
“Change is inevitable–except from a vending machine.”
Robert C. Gallagher
“Change is the end result of all true learning.”
Leo Buscaglia
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
John F. Kennedy
“Change may not always bring growth, but there is no growth without change.”
Roy T. Bennett
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
Wayne W. Dyer
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Barack Obama
Inspirational Quotes about Change
“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
Norman Vincent Peale
“Change, like healing, takes time.”
Veronica Roth
“Changing is what people do when they have no options left.”
Holly Black
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
John F. Kennedy
“Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.”
Jacob M. Braude
“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. ”
William S. Burroughs
“Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”
William Jennings Bryan
“Don’t expect to see a change if you don’t make one.”
Unknown
“Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.”
Kin Hubbard
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
Ovid
“Every hundred feet the world changes.”
Roberto Bolaño
“Every woman that finally figured out her worth, has picked up her suitcases of pride and boarded a flight to freedom, which landed in the valley of change.”
Shannon L. Alder
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
John Kenneth Galbraith
“Fashion changes, but style endures.”
Coco Chanel
“Folks, I don’t trust children. They’re here to replace us.”
Stephen Colbert
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
Eric Roth
“Forget yesterday – it has already forgotten you. Don’t sweat tomorrow – you haven’t even met. Instead, open your eyes and your heart to a truly precious gift – today.”
Steve Maraboli
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
John Green
“Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change”
Cassandra Clare
“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
N.R. Narayana Murthy
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
Mother Teresa
“I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.”
Georg C. Lichtenberg
“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better”
Plutarch
“I find the best way to love someone is not to change them, but instead, help them reveal the greatest version of themselves.”
Steve Maraboli
“I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”
Judith Minty
“I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….”
Erica Jong
“I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”
Sylvia Plath
Inspirational Quotes about Change
“I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.”
Aldous Huxley
“I’m unpredictable, I never know where I’m going until I get there, I’m so random, I’m always growing, learning, changing, I’m never the same person twice. But one thing you can be sure of about me; is I will always do exactly what I want to do.”
C. JoyBell C.
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
Hillel
“If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you’ve made, if they don’t realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go.”
Steve Maraboli
“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.”
Anatole France
“If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.”
Katherine Hepburn
“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”
Woodrow Wilson
“If you’re in a bad situation, don’t worry it’ll change. If you’re in a good situation, don’t worry it’ll change.”
John A. Simone, Sr.
“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.”
Steve Maraboli
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
Stephen Hawking
“It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.”
Samuel Beckett
“It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t… It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.”
James Gordon
“Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.”
Irene Peter
“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
Tony DeLiso
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
Lao Tzu
“Life is about change. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes it’s beautiful. But most of the time, it’s both.”
Lana Lang
“Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.”
Billy Cox
“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”
Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
“Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor”
Alexis Carrel
“Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.”
Roy T. Bennett
“Moving doesn’t change who you are. It only changes the view outside your window.”
Rachel Hollis
“No matter what people will tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
Robin Williams
Inspirational Quotes about Change
“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”
Madonna
“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.”
Stephen King
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
“Nothing endures but change.”
Heraclitus
“Nothing is lost . . . Everything is transformed.”
Michael Ende
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
Mary Shelley
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“One day or day one. You decide.”
Unknown
“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”
Confucius
“Our ability to adapt is amazing. Our ability to change isn’t quite as spectacular.”
Lisa Lutz
“People are very open-minded about new things, as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.”
Charles F. Kettering
“People can cry much easier than they can change.”
James Baldwin
“People change for two reasons; either they learned a lot or they’ve been hurt too much.”
Unknown
“People don’t change, they just have momentary steps outside of their true character.”
Chad Kultgen
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.”
Peter Senge
“People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t”
Stephen Fry
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Renew, release, let go. Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. You can’t “should’ve” done something. You can only DO something. Renew yourself. Release that attachment. Today is a new day!”
Steve Maraboli
“Right now I want a word that describes the feeling that you get–a cold sick feeling, deep down inside–when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don’t want it to, but you can’t stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again quite be the same person you were.”
Jennifer Donnelly
“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Jon Krakauer
“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
Eckhart Tolle
“Sometimes you hit a point where you either change or self-destruct.”
Sam Stevens
“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”
Maya Angelou
“Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited about what could go right.”
Tony Robbins
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”
Kakuzō Okakura
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
Alfred North Whitehead
Inspirational Quotes about Change
“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”
Barbara Kingsolver
“The great growling engine of change – technology.”
Alvin Toffler
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
Oprah Winfrey
“The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.”
Ellen Glasgow
“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.”
C. JoyBell C.
“The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.”
Susanna Kearsley
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Steve Jobs
“The person you became with her is worth being.”
Veronica Roth
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Karl Marx
“The present changes the past. Looking back you do not find what you left behind.”
Kiran Desai
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
Socrates
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.”
Aaron Lauritsen
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
Albert Einstein
“The world doesn’t change in front of your eyes, it changes behind your back.”
Terry Hayes
“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
Charles Kettering
“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”
Ronald Reagan
“There is nothing permanent except change.”
Heraclitus
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
Andy Warhol
“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”
Stephen Chbosky
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Tides do what tides do–they turn.”
Derek Landy
“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.”
Thomas Hardy
“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.”
Stephen King, The Green Mile
“To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.”
William James
“To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.”
Stephen R. Covey
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
Henri Bergson
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
Winston S. Churchill
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
Brene Brown
“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”
Walter Mosley
“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.”
Rick Warren
“We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.”
Max Depree
“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.”
Katharine Hepburn
“We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become.”
Dr. David Hawkins
“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”
John Dryden
“What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.”
Abraham Maslow
“What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.”
Madeleine Albright
“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.”
Andy Warhol
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
Haruki Murakami
Inspirational Quotes about Change
“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Words are where most change begins.”
Brandon Sanderson
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
Rumi
“You can’t change what’s going on around you until you start changing what’s going on within you.”
Unknown
“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
Philip Pullman
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Buckminster Fuller
“You tried to change didn’t you? Closed your mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less volatile, less awake… You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.”
Warsan Shire
“You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Neil Gaiman
“Your success in life isn’t based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers, and business.”
Mark Sanborn
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle. “
Napoleon Hill
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
Benjamin Franklin
“There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.
And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.
So you watch yourself about complaining.
What you’re supposed to do
when you don’t like a thing is change it.
If you can’t change it,
change the way you think about it.”
Maya Angelou
“You can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
…is to press play.” ― Jay Asher
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God is Change.”
Octavia E. Butler
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