In a world that is constantly evolving, the ability to embrace and drive change is more important than ever. Whether it's a personal transformation, a career shift, or a broader societal evolution, navigating change with courage and resilience can lead to extraordinary outcomes. This collection of 88 inspirational quotes is designed to ignite your passion for change, offering wisdom and insight from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries across the globe. Let these powerful words inspire you to take bold steps forward, and remind you that with change comes endless possibility.
1. “Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.Harper: That's how people change.” - Tony Kushner
2. “In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.” - Barack Obama
3. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” - Joseph Campbell
4. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. I'm not sure who the first person was who said that. Probably Shakespeare. Or maybe Sting. But at the moment, it's the sentence that best explains my tragic flaw, my inability to change. I don't think I'm alone in this. The more I get to know other people, the more I realize it's kind of everyone's flaw. Staying exactly the same for as long as possible, standing perfectly still... It feels safer somehow. And if you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar. Because if you took that leap of faith, went outside the box, did something unexpected... Who knows what other pain might be out there, waiting for you. Chances are it could be even worse. So you maintain the status quo. Choose the road already traveled and it doesn't seem that bad. Not as far as flaws go. You're not a drug addict. You're not killing anyone... Except maybe yourself a little. When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like an earthquake or an explosion, where all of a sudden we're like this different person. I think it's smaller than that. The kind of thing most people wouldn't even notice unless they looked at us really close. Which, thank God, they never do. But you notice it. Inside you that change feels like a world of difference. And you hope this is it. This is the person you get to be forever... that you'll never have to change again.” - Laura J. Burns
5. “Let him who would move the world first move himself.” - Socrates
6. “One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
7. “instinct leads me to another flow” - Queen Latifah
8. “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
9. “If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” - Martin Luther
10. “For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.” - John Dewey
11. “What people have the capacity to choose, they have the ability to change.” - Madeleine Albright
12. “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
13. “Change can be weird or even queer. But change has to happen for things to grow--for us to grow. And change isn't so bad when you're not in it alone.” - P.C. Cast
14. “by the time you open your eyes, the world might have already changed.” - Matsuri Hino
15. “Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments — but all of this is transitory it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.” - Paulo Coelho
16. “Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have , so to speak , pawned a part of their narcissism.” - Sigmund Freud
17. “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
18. “I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.” - Alexis de Tocqueville
19. “IF YOU WANT TO CREATE A CHANGE, you must challenge not only the models of Unreality, but the paradigms that underwrite them.” - Stafford Beer
20. “During the last six months the little girl Harriet, without her noticing it, had disappeared and a new Harriet had taken her place. A Harriet who looked much the same outside, but was more of a person inside.” - Noel Streatfeild
21. “Places change imperceptibly – in detail, at least – a good deal,' said the Doctor, making an effort to keep up a conversation that plainly would not go on itself; 'and people too; population shifts – there's an old fellow, sir, they call Death.” - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
22. “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
23. “A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.” - Henry Wallace
24. “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” - Elizabeth Edwards
25. “Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor” - Alexis Carrel
26. “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.[Address in the Assembly Hall at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, June 26 1963]” - John F. Kennedy
27. “As man sows, so shall he reap. In works of fiction, such men are sometimes converted. More often, in real life, they do not change their natures until they are converted into dust.” - Charles W. Chesnutt
28. “When you listen, it's amazing what you can learn. When you act on what you've learned, it's amazing what you can change.” - Audrey McLaughlin
29. “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
30. “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
31. “As we know from the study of history, no new system can impose itself upon a previous one without incorporating many of the elements to be found in the latter...” - Margaret Atwood
32. “It's brainless to assume that making changes to your window's view will give a new perspective” - Death Cab for Cutie
33. “To desire to change one’s past means there is a desire to change oneself. To desire to change oneself, one must learn to change.” - Lorii Myers
34. “This malignant persistence since September 11th is the biggest surprise of all. In previous decades, sneak attacks, stock-market crashes, and other great crises became hinges on which American history swung in dramatically new directions. But events on the same scale, or nearly so, no longer seem to have that power; moneyed interests may have become too entrenched, elites too self-seeking, institutions too feeble, and the public too polarized and passive for the country to be shocked into fundamental change.” - George Packer
35. “Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” - Ann Voskamp
36. “You can’t change the road you traveled from a child, but you can certainly take a different road for the journey into your future.” - Shamarion Whitaker
37. “Your environment will eat your goals and plans for breakfast.” - Steve Pavlina
38. “Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” - Simone de Beauvoir
39. “Even if there were only two men left in the world and both of them saints they wouldn't be happy. One them would be bound to try and improve the other. That is the nature of things.” - Frank O'Connor
40. “So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love.” - Deb Caletti
41. “Men's lives are not progressions, as conventionally rendered in history paintings, nor are they a series of facts that may be enumerated & in their proper order understood. Rather they are a series of transformations, some immediate & shocking, some so slow as to be imperceptible, yet so complete & horrifying that at the end of his life a man may search his memory in vain for a moment of correspondence between his self in his dotage & him in his youth.” - Richard Flanagan
42. “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
43. “There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.” - Orson Scott Card
44. “It was long since I had longed for anything and the effect on me was horrible.” - Samuel Beckett
45. “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
46. “If time and space, as sages say,Are things which cannot be,The sun which does not feel decayNo greater is than we.So why, Love, should we ever prayTo live a century?The butterfly that lives a dayHas lived eternity.” - T.S. Eliot
47. “The word "seek" is a verb. Are you treating it as such in your life? If you seek change, success, or love, DO it - BE it!” - Steve Maraboli
48. “God is Change.Earthseed: The Books of the LivingLauren Oya Olamina” - Octavia E. Butler
49. “Because I don't think God trusts just anybody with so much heartache. The world has not yet seen what God can do with a man who gives both halves of a broken heart to him. And I don't doubt that a man like that can change the world...or at least a little part of it.” - Chris Fabry
50. “That's the thing I'm learning about being thrown out on yer own. Nobody does nothing for you. If you don't change it, it don't get changed.” - Patrick Ness
51. “The majority of people have successfully alienated themselves from change; they tediously arrange their lives into a familiar pattern, they give themselves to normalcy, they are proud if they are able to follow in auspicious footsteps set before them, they take pride in always coloring inside the lines and they feel secure if they belong to a batch of others who are like them. Now, if familiar patterns bore you, if normalcy passes before you unnoticed, if you want to create your own footsteps in the earth and leave your own handprints on the skies, if you are the one who doesn't mind the lines in the coloring book as much as others do, and perchance you do not cling to a flock for you to identify with, then you must be ready for adversity. If you are something extraordinary, you are going to always shock others and while they go about existing in their mundaneness which they call success, you're going to be flying around crazy in their skies and that scares them. People are afraid of change, afraid of being different, afraid of doing things and thinking things that aren't a part of their checkerboard game of a life. They only know the pieces and the moves in their games, and that's it. You're always going to find them in the place that you think you're going to find them in, and every time they think about you, you're going to give them a heart attack.” - C. JoyBell C.
52. “Жизнь страны менялась с каждым столетием. Менялась одежда, совершенствовалось оружие, были усмирены картофельные бунты. Люди научились брить бороды. Полетел первый воздушный шар. Были изобретены железные близнецы пароход и паровоз. Затрубили автомашины.А дорога осталась такой же, какой была при Соловье разбойнике.” - Ilya Ilf
53. “Change is not always a good thing. What I need is not change from one thing to another but transformation from who I am into who I was meant to become. Only when God's transforming power touches me can I begin to live the simpler, freer, fresher, more creative, more patient, more passionate, more sacrificial, riskier, rawer, more real, more love-driven life God intended for me all along. That transformation is what awaits all who dare to enter the story of God. As Paul wrote, 'Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think' (Romans 12:2)” - Steven James
54. “I wouldn’t change a thingBecause all those things led me tothis placeAnd to you” - Elizabeth Eulberg
55. “It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.” - Veronica Roth
56. “But everything changes. To deny change is to deny life. And the present moment contains miracles. Including an ability to see and receive the new.” - Brooke Berman
57. “From the Buddhist perspective, the only lasting way to bring about change is for people themselves to change.” - Pat Allwright
58. “Fire isn't always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change.” - Jim Butcher
59. “Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven.” - Larry Crabb
60. “Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.” - Randy Alcorn
61. “We Americans... like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.” - W. Somerset Maugham
62. “Behavior precedes belief - that is, most people must engage in a behavior before they accept that it is beneficial; then they see the results, and then they believe that it is the right thing to do....implementation precedes buy-in; it does not follow it.” - Douglas B. Reeves
63. “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment” - Pema Chodron
64. “The victim mindset dilutes the human potential. By not accepting personal responsibility for our circumstances, we greatly reduce our power to change them.” - Steve Maraboli
65. “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
66. “It is the artist who tries to gradually accustom people to the possibilities of a better state of things.” - C.A. Dawson Scott
67. “Maybe not. But maybe that's how the world changes, Isaiah. One father, one child, at a time.” - Barbara Samuel
68. “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.
69. “Nothing is made, nothing disappears. The same changes, at the same places, never stopping.” - Dejan Stojanovic
70. “Kindness eases changeLove quiets fear” - Octavia E. Butler
71. “People tend to focus on the things that they don't like about themselves. While that's important for change, it's equally important to focus on what they love about themselves. For every one thing you dislike about yourself, think of five things you like about yourself. It's a balancing act.” - Tom Giaquinto
72. “...at some point we must achieve our identity -we can't be always in adolescence seeking who we are...” - John Geddes
73. “You must be willing to give up what you are, to become what you want to be.” - Orrin Woodward
74. “For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people.” - Paul Kriwaczek
75. “If you want drama, settle for the one who will change your relationship status. If you want love, wait for the one who will change your life.” - Steve Maraboli
76. “Don’t hang onto anything too tightly – all things must change and you have to allow room for them to grow and blossom.” - Rachael Bermingham
77. “The path of your life can change in an instant.” - Ann Brashares
78. “Everything is in the process of becoming something else. It’s the law of change.” I briefly kissed Livvie’s eyelids before she could open them. “I’m in the process of becoming something else, Livvie. I hope it’s something good, something far removed from the monster you knew.” - CJ Roberts
79. “Hate is infectious, but so is love, the difference between the two is one takes effort and the other one doesn’t.” - Dave Guerrero
80. “If you want to live the life you've always wanted, you'll have to make the changes you've always needed.” - Orrin Woodward
81. “People get stuck a lot because they're afraid to act; in the worst case,...we get so attached to some end result that we can't function. We need help just to move on, only life doesn't wait.” - Bernie Glassman
82. “Turn towards love, and become love.” - Bryant McGill
83. “I remembered something Father Michael said to me a the monastery. 'The human soul is meant to expand. Things that once captured your heart may no longer be able to contain it.” - Susan E. Isaacs
84. “Maybe I can learn to live in a way that makes it worth writing about, and maybe I can actually become something more than this empty shell.” - Charlotte Eriksson
85. “You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.” - Charlotte Eriksson
86. “Its better to change yourself instead of waiting for others to change for you.” - Parvez3786
87. “Life means change; where there is no change, death comes.” - Theodore Roosevelt
88. “When you pray and hope for a change. Don't expect a change to come. Expect the opportunity for a change to come.” - Jonathan Anthony Burkett
