105 Change-Inspiring Quotes

Change is an inevitable part of life, often bringing with it opportunities for growth, renewal, and transformation. Whether you're facing a personal crossroads, professional challenges, or simply seeking a fresh perspective, the right words can ignite a powerful shift in your mindset. In this collection, we have carefully curated 105 of the most inspiring quotes to motivate and empower you on your journey of change. These timeless words of wisdom from influential thinkers, leaders, and visionaries will help you navigate the uncertainties of change and embrace the potential for new beginnings. Dive in and let these quotes inspire the change you wish to see in your life.

1. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]” - Karl Marx

2. “Let him who would move the world first move himself.” - Socrates

3. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” - Mahatma Gandhi

4. “Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life’.” - Helen Exley

5. “In youth, it was a way I had,To do my best to please.And change, with every passing ladTo suit his theories.But now I know the things I knowAnd do the things I do,And if you do not like me so,To hell, my love, with you.” - Dorothy Parker

6. “The staunchest conservatives advocate a range of changes which differ in specifics, rather than in number or magnitude, from the changes advocated by those considered liberal…change, as such, is simply not a controversial issue. Yet a common practice among the anointed is to declare themselves emphatically, piously, and defiantly in favor of 'change.' Thus those who oppose their particular changes are depicted as being against change in general. It is as if opponents of the equation 2+2=7 were depicted as being against mathematics. Such a tactic might, however, be more politically effective than trying to defend the equation on its own merits. ” - Thomas Sowell

7. “And we are made different. On the instant. What we know, what we were, is banished by that instant, razed like a castle under siege, and nothing is recognizable is left. The world is unmade.” - Jennifer Roberson

8. “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.” - Stephen Chbosky

9. “Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?” - Daniel Quinn

10. “If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.” - Kurt Lewin

11. “The first step to the knowledge of the wonder and mystery of life is the recognition of the monstrous nature of the earthly human realm as well as its glory, the realization that this is just how it is and that it cannot and will not be changed. Those who think they know how the universe could have been had they created it, without pain, without sorrow, without time, without death, are unfit for illumination.” - Joseph Campbell

12. “It's hard to fight when the fight ain't fair.” - Taylor Swift

13. “People don't resist change. They resist being changed.” - Peter Senge

14. “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

15. “Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.” - bell hooks

16. “If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door” - Milton Berle

17. “The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.” - Siegfried Sassoon

18. “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have , so to speak , pawned a part of their narcissism.” - Sigmund Freud

19. “I am a fashion person, and fashion is not only about clothes -- it's about all kinds of change” - Karl Lagerfeld

20. “Change is in the air. This change reminds us that we are made and beautifully sculpted by the same power that orchestrates the change of season. Let this be the season you embrace and align yourself with this change.” - Steve Maraboli

21. “Simplify your life. You don't grow spiritual, you shrink spiritual.” - Steve Maraboli

22. “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

23. “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

24. “It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense 'better' than the form that is being used today.” - Terry Crowley

25. “You cannot change what you are, only what you do.” - Philip Pullman

26. “The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. .. Even in the Eternal City (Rome), says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.” - Craig Ferguson

28. “It is a time of change,'' Sazed said. ''Perhaps it is also time to learn of other truths, other ways.” - Brandon Sanderson

29. “Part broken - part whole, you begin again. ( from 'Why books seem shockproof against change.' THE TIMES: BOOKS)” - Jeanette Winterson

30. “The conversation soon turned upon fishing, and she heard Mr. Darcy invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was walking arm in arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of her wonder. Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme; and continually was she repeating, "Why is he so altered? From what can it proceed? It cannot be for me, it cannot be for my sake that his manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me.” - Jane Austen

31. “It is always easier to destroy a complex system than to selectively alter it.” - Roby James

32. “من قال لك أن درب الجنة معبد بالورود؟” - أحمد خيري العمري

33. “I will write one book that will change entire humankind if only you have enough guts to read my previous ones.” - Santosh Kalwar

34. “...things can happen when you least expect them so you always gotta be prepared. And pay attention to the details. The devil is in the details.” - Lesley Kagen

35. “If you don't change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?” - William Somerset Maugham

36. “How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

37. “If you find yourself easily provoked, then just change the channel.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

38. “We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence. ” - H.G. Wells

39. “To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".” - Cornel West

40. “Our mouths and bodies speak for us in a new language as the trees shake loose a rain of petals that stick to our slickness like skins we will wear forever. And just like that, I am changed.” - Libba Bray

41. “What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don't change, you die. It's that simple. It's that scary.” - Leonard Sweet

42. “Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.” - Sherwood Smith

43. “It was the challenge of life too, was it not? People could never be fully understood. They were ever changing, different people at different times and under different circumstances and influences. And always growing, always creating themselves anew.How impossible it was to know another human being.How impossible to know even oneself.” - Mary Balogh

44. “The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.” - William Seward

45. “You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.” - Marian Wright Edelman

46. “It's much easier . . . to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time.” - Markus Zusak

47. “What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.” - Mignon McLaughlin

48. “I've come to believe that in everyone's life, there's one undeniable moment of change, a set of circumstances that suddenly alters everything.” - Nicholas Sparks

49. “Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.” - Katherine Mansfield

50. “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.Ignorance is our deepest secret.And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.Here is a quick test:If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.It will do both of you good.” - Vera Nazarian

51. “We as human beings appear to be in the most adverse stages in our evolution. How can the Mother Earth survive when the souls of Her sons are tainted with avarice, and the very minds which shape Her fate are dominated by ego? Minds that are prone to paranoia and can no longer trust its brothers. Humanity is at a crossroads. A crossroads which speaks of either profound change or ultimate destruction.” - Chris Cordova

52. “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got.” - James P. Lewis

53. “Not only are poor, unemployed, less will-educated and non-white people more likely to become depressed, but they are also least likely to benefit from treatment by either antidepressants or psychotherapy. That is why combating depression requires more than merely providing effective treatment for those who are already suffering from it. We also need the change the social conditions - such a racism, unemployment, poverty, unaffordable housing, and lack of adequate education - that put people at increased risk of becoming depressed.” - Irving Kirsch

54. “But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.” - Deb Caletti

55. “We are often at odds with our wise and loving Lord because the change he is working on is not the change we have dreamt about. We dream about change in it, while God is working in the midst of it to change us.” - Timothy Lane

56. “the path of change is unpredictable.” - Barbara Marciniak

57. “My interest in Sufism began when I was a college student. At the time, I was a rebellious young woman who liked to wrap several shawls of ‘-isms’ around her shoulders: I was a leftist, feminist, nihilist, environmentalist, anarcho-pacifist…I wasn’t interested in any religion and the difference between ‘religiosity’ and ‘spirituality’ was lost to me. Having spent some time of my childhood with a loving grandmother with many superstitions and beliefs, I had a sense the world was not composed of solely material things and there was more to life than I could see. But the truth is, I wasn’t interested in understanding the world. I only wanted to change it.” - Elif Shafak

58. “Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;For I am like the Moon,you will see me with new face everyday.” - Rumi

59. “This was when I learned that you have to give up your life as you know it to get a new one: that sometimes you need to let go of everything you're clinging to and start over, whether because you've outgrown it or because it's not working anymore, or because it was wrong for you in the first place.” - Kelly Cutrone

60. “What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.” - Abraham Maslow

61. “Don't waste your energy trying to change opinions ... Do your thing, and don't care if they like it.” - Tina Fey

62. “The example could encourage others who only fear to start.” - Jose Rizal

63. “It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.” - Samuel Beckett

64. “Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?” - Jennifer E. Smith

65. “Whatever he had found, it made him a better person. Maybe that's what love was, finding the person who brings out the best in you and eliminates the worst.” - Diana Holquist

66. “عندما تخطئ السماوات يقوم الشباب بتصحيح ذلك. وقد جاءت الفرصة فينبغي ألا تضيع!!” - herbert marcuse

67. “Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world.” - Nick Harkaway

68. “He was one of those people who completely changes when they smile. Like the sun had come out.” - Caroline Green

69. “Didn't they realize that the only way to change things was to act?” - Tamora Pierce

70. “I think maybe Hell is a place. But you don't have to stay anywhere forever.” - Neil Gaiman

71. “From the Buddhist perspective, the only lasting way to bring about change is for people themselves to change.” - Pat Allwright

72. “Give serious thought to why your company should care about your strategy. Specifically, find problems that the board wants to be solved. What are senior managers scared of? Part of becoming a credible strategic thinker is learning effective approaches to selling ideas for your situation. You’ll know that you’re getting better at selling (or pitching) strategy when managers start coming to you when there is strategic thinking to be done.” - Max Mckeown

73. “You don't know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write. But now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb up out of some deep, really deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside.” - James Baldwin

74. “Change is the most beneficial power available to you, simply change the things you don't like, replacing them with your true desires.” - Steven Redhead

75. “The power to change is in my hands.” - Helen M. Ryan

76. “She said to embrace each change as if it were a small death.” - Suzanne Morrison

77. “That I should just dive in and let my world fall apart and rebuild itself. That if I can embrace change, I can embrace death, and that is the secret to liberation.” - Suzanne Morrison

78. “Where there is will there is a way Where there is a way there is progress And where there is progress there is change.” - Amit Abraham

79. “Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have---and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.” - James Belasco and Ralph Stayer Flight of the Buffalo 1994

80. “I was so much in the habit of having Albertine with me, and now I suddenly saw a new aspect of Habit. Hitherto I had regarded it chiefly as an annihilating force which suppresses the originality and even the awareness of one's perceptions; now I saw it as a dread deity, so riveted to one's being, its insignificant face so incrusted in one's heart, that if it detaches itself, if it turns away from one, this deity that one had barely distinguished inflicts on one sufferings more terrible than any other and is then as cruel as death itself.” - Marcel Proust

81. “When you feel deep change in your heart, you must understand that there is a lack of an old and righteous company.” - Moazzam Shaikh

82. “I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.” - Alasdair Gray

83. “Maybe we’ll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely.” - Carl Safina

84. “Tell me what you’re looking for and i will become that for you. I can sacrifice my inner freedoms for you without looking twice at my old journals and solid promises I made to myself about such things. But you must be prepared to kill me when the smiles are no longer frequent. Do it while I sleep. While I hold your hand. Do it fast, baby. Do it fast.” - Darnell Lamont Walker

85. “It's funny isn't it, how everything's changing all time. Nothing stays still.” - Julia Green

86. “And change isn't destruction. It's just change. ” - Rachel Caine

87. “When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary.” - Walter M. Miller Jr.

88. “Things are embarrassing, best to avoid them. But since your death I prefer a naturalist style of conversation. Let's strip it down to what matters. Let's have emotions and beliefs on show without the modest covering of small talk.” - Rosamund Lupton

89. “That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper.” - Joe Abercrombie

90. “Pains are not to be relievedSorrows are not to fade awaya slight change in the visionmay bring a new experience” - Rixa White

91. “I didn’t know how good change could feel. I just worried about the risks, not the rewards.” - Kaira Rouda

92. “No ordinary effort stops the wheel.In sleep it spins without resistance.Passively, falling deeper, lacking the will to activate any change.” - Stephen Demone

93. “Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.” - Randy Alcorn

94. “I don't feel like I can change the world. I don't even try. I only want to change this small life that I see standing in front of me, which is suffering.” - Somaly Mam

95. “We're all made the same but then born to change. Which then don't make us the same.” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett

96. “Change. Adapt. Bend so as not to be broken. Let opportunity guide your actions.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

97. “I don't understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.” - Lauren Oliver

98. “Can't look at the damage that's been done, it's not healthy. Have to look ahead of it. Can't change what I've done, only what I'm gonna do.” - Jordan Ghere

99. “If you want change and don’t make choices that reflect the change, you are making a choice to keep things the same.” - Steve Maraboli

100. “Nights without beginning that had no end. Talking about a past as if it'd really happened. Telling themselves that this time next year, this time next year, things were going to be different.” - Raymond Carver

101. “Turn towards love, and become love.” - Bryant McGill

102. “We give up our power to the very people who took it away from us in the first place.” - Patti Digh

103. “Its better to change yourself instead of waiting for others to change for you.” - Parvez3786

104. “Divorce is the start point for a brand new life. Don't lose the chance to redesign it upon your dreams!” - Rossana Condoleo

105. “In sharing how God is changing our lives, we find the lives of others changed as well.” - Dillon Burroughs