: Quotations on Change, Innovation and New Ideas

Quotations on Change, and Innovation

38 of 54 quotes from Rob Kall's personal quotation database. Doing a talk, presentation, book or chapter and need special topics? Call for very reasonable prices on a special quotation search. If you use a quote from here, please acknowledge the source and the help in the appropriate section of your book.

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CHANGE, PERMANENCE
Saint Augustine 354-430
Things that are not immutable are not at all.
Saint Augustine

CHANGE, INNOVATION
He that will not apply new remedies , must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Bacon Essays; Of Innovation

"...the magnitude of change we sense around the world compels us to look within ourselves and to God to forge a rare alloy of courage and restraint.
George Bush, "7/10/89

EXCESS, SURFEIT, SATIETY, SENSATION-SEEKING
"With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe,
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below."
Byron: Child Harold, Canto 1, st. 6

CHANGE, YINYANG, DEATH, HIBERNATE
So when some dear joy loses
Its beauteous summer glow,
Think how the roots of roses
Are kept alive in the snow."
Alice Cary (1820-1871

Time is a changeable ally.
Winston Churchill, Broadcast, 1940

COPING, STRESS, STABILITY, SINEWAVE, CHANGE
"Be not elated by fortune, be not depressed by adversity."
Cleobulus

CHANGE
We live in a world where what you earn depends on what you can learn, where the average 18-year-old will change jobs eight times in a lifetime, and where none of us can promise any of you that what you do for a living is absolutely safe from now on.
Bill Clinton, 1992 2nd presidential debate


CHANGE
"Change is the nursery of music, joy, life and Eternity."
Donne, John ,1572-1631/hl

IDEAS, CHANGE
Men scorn what they don't understand.
Sir Arthur COnan DOyle 1859-193 The sign of Four

CHANGE, CONVERSION
If the cask is to hold the wine, its water must first be poured out.
Eckhart

ACTION
You really can change the world if you care enough.
Marion Wright Edelman

CHANGE, CREATIVITY
Ideas are fatal to caste.
E. M. Forster

Serious illness leaves no aspect of life untouched. Your relationships, your work, your sense of what life is and ought to be -- these all change, and the change is terrifying.
Arthur W. Frank, Reflections on Illness 1991

Time changes every man. Unusual circumstances change them in unusual ways.
Bryant Gumbel 2-26-93

CHANGE, PROGRESS, DISCOMFORT, INVENTION
"The world owes all of its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits."
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

TIME, CHANGE
"You cannot step twice into the same stream. For as you are stepping in, other and yet other waters flow on."
Heraclitus

ACTION, CHANGE
To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium.
Eric Hoffer, The Ordeal of Change 1964

CHANGE, REVOLUTION
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.
Abbie Hoffman

CHANGE, RELOCATION, MOVING
The finest flowers are those transplanted; for transplanting means difficulty, a readjusting to new conditions, and through the effort put forth to find adjustment does the plant progress. Transplanted men are the ones who do the things worth while, and transplanted girls are the only ones who inspire a mighty passion.
Elbert Hubbard

CHANGE, NEW
I believe that the aim of the avant-garde should be to re-discover-- not invent -- in their purest state, the permanent forms and forgotten ideals of the theatre. I make no claim to have succeeded in this. But others will succeed and show that all truth and reality is classical and eternal.
Eugene Ionesco

PARADIGMS, SUCCESS, PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS, PERSPECTIVE, CHANGE
Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute. To be more successful is not, however, to be either completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number.
Thomas S. Kuhn

Peace is neither the absence of war nor the presence of a disarmament agreement. Peace is a change of heart.
Richard Lamm, frmr Gov. of Colorado

ACTION
All the means of action-- the shapeless masses, the materials-- lie everywhere about us; what we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into crystal, bright and clear.
Longfellow

FLEXIBILITY
"The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions."
James Russel Lowell

FATE
"Nothing is eternal on the earth below;
And FORTUNE delights in constant CHANGE,
So she may more plainly show her power."
Machiavelli, Capitolo Did Fortuna

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

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr

REVOLUTION, CHANGE
Revolutions are not made; they come.
Wendell Phillips

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change, we change.
Thoreau, Walden, Ch. XVIII

DISCOVERY, DISAGREEMENT, CHANGE, AUTHORITY, BELIEF
I was taught to ask for proof, that it was good to distrust authority. You need to have the courage to disagree. There are times in your life when you should be a radical.
James D. Watson, 1993, (co-discover of the DNA double helix)

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead

CHANGE, RISK, STABILITY, ACTION
Allons! we must not stop here!
However sweet these laid-up stores-- however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here;
However shelter'd this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a while.
Allons! the inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and wild seas;
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity
Whitman, Walt, Song of The Open Road

CONSERVATISM, CHANGE, IMAGINATION, CREATIVITY
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
Wilde, In Conversation

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
Wizard of Oz movie (adapted from L. Frank Baum's series of books

VARIETY
"Gladly we would Anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand.
...Our love of the Real draws us to Permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and Sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. Dedication to one thought is quickly odious."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"How all things Change among men! How what was false becomes true with the flight of Time."
Voltaire, Essai sur les Moeurs et lesprit des Nations ch 31