Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Change
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“The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like healthcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made.”
Tony Benn (1925–2014) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Michael Moore in the movie Sicko (2007) Probably derived from older version:
“Change is not a destination as hope is not a strategy.”
Rudy Giuliani (born 1944) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Republican National Convention, 2008
“Ellen, only last night, asked, 'Daddy, when will we be rich?' But I did not say to her what I know: 'We will be rich soon, and you who handle poverty badly will handle riches equally badly.' And that is true. In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life could not change the sun or water the desert, so it changed itself.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Southern man better keep your head. Don't forget what your good book said. Southern change gonna come at last Now your crosses are burning fast. Southern man.”
Neil Young (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, baby, that's hard to change, I can't tell them how to feel, Some get stoned, some get strange, But sooner or later, it all gets real. Walk on. Walk on.”
Neil Young (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can really learn a lot that way, It will change you in the middle of the day, Though your confidence may be shattered, It doesn't matter.”
Neil Young (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's gonna take a lotta love To change the way things are It's gonna take a lotta love Or we won't get too far.”
Neil Young (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A change came o'er my Vision - it was night: We clove a pathway through a frantic throng: The steeds, wild-plunging, filled us with affright: The chariots whirled along.Within a marble hall a river ran - A living tide, half muslin and half cloth: And here one mourned a broken wreath or fan, Yet swallowed down her wrath”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thus, in his belly, can he change a sin, Lust it comes out, that gluttony went in.”
Ben Jonson (1572–1637) said by 1637 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.”
Washington Irving (1783–1859) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tales of a Traveler (1824), Preface, p. 7
“Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American scholar, Volume 35, 1965, p. 200
“People in new environments always produce the new preceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change. It is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
“Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes? (p. 28)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With Gutenberg Europe enters the technological phase of progress, when change itself becomes the archetypal norm of social life. (p. 177)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is never anything less than accelerated technological change. (p. 102)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs. (p. 8)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information. (p. 178-179)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My method is vertical rather than horizontal so the scenery does not change but the texture does.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to The Listener October 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 318
“Pornography and violence are by-products of societies in which private identity has been...destroyed by sudden environmental change.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 514
“Q: Do you feel a need to be distinctive and mass-produced? Q: Are you in the groove? That is, are you moving in ever-diminishing circles? Q: How often do you change your mind, your politics, your clothes? (p. 121-125)”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house.”
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: NY Journal-American (25 August 1965).
“The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change.”
Richard Bach (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The #1 New York Times Bestseller (1992) by John Bear, p. 93
“[For Winston Churchill], democracy is a state in which the people acquiesce in the rule of property. Democracy is an admirable institution so long as the poor continue to carry the rich on their backs. When the poor decide to change places, democracy falls into disrepute. That is why, whenever you scratch a Tory, you find a Fascist.”
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tribune (13 July 1945), quoted in John Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), p. 142
“It is only by refusing to accept the situation that in the end we can change the situation.”
William Barclay (1907–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The major premise of the conclusion expressed in a statute, the change of policy that induces the enactment, may not be set out in terms, but it is not an adequate discharge of duty for courts to say: We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Johnson v. United States, 163 F. 30 (1st Cir. 1908) (Justice Holmes sitting by designation as a judge of the First Circuit).
“If minorities prefer Sharia Law, then we advise them to go to those places where that’s the state law... We will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell ‘discrimination.’”
Vladimir Putin (born 1952) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 30 September 2016 article by Huffington Post
“I was profoundly embarrassed by it and did all I could to change it.”
Gough Whitlam (1916–2014) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Paul Kelly, 100 Years – The Australian Story (Allen & Unwin, 2001), p. 196
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The prophetic mission created a scientific-gnostic change in the world that converted the insipid Greek philosophies, which were formulated with all their past and present worth by the Greeks themselves into an objective mysticism and a veritable intuitive perception for masters of divine insight.”
Ruhollah Khomeini (1900–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have so much control over your life, it would be a shame to throw it away. But you do just that if you hope to get what you want by invoking your rights or by trying to change others.”
Harry Browne (1933–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An individual doesn't need to live in a free society in order to be free himself — and when he tries to change the world, he's in for a lot more trouble than he may have bargained for.”
Harry Browne (1933–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is the government getting too repressive? You could spend the rest of your life fighting it, but your actions won't change the fate of the nation. However, you can make sure the repression doesn't get in your way.”
Harry Browne (1933–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each one of these bodies [art-works which Arp made] certainly signifies something, but it is only once there is nothing left for me to change that I begin to look for its meaning, that I give it a name.”
Jean Arp (1886–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I fight with love, and I laugh with rage. You've gotta live light enough to see the humor, And long enough to see some change.”
Ani DiFranco (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First We Take Manhattan" (written in 1986) - Leonard Cohen video - Jennifer Warnes & Leonard Cohen video
“* It's coming to America first The cradle of the best and of the worst It's here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is hard to grow up in a society in which one’s important problems are treated as nonexistent. It is impossible to belong to it, it is hard to fight to change it.”
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why do you complain of your fate when you could so easily change it?”
Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) said by 1814 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't commit suicide, because you might change your mind two weeks later.”
Art Buchwald (1925–2007) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A humorous personal mantra he used to combat his states of depression, published in Too Soon to Say Goodbye (2006)
“In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.”
Bill Moyers (1934–2025) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Meaning of Freedom", Sol Feinstone Lecture at the United States Military Academy (15 November 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 78
“What do we have to do to make the women realize we don't hate 'em? Change our attitude on abortion? Where does this stuff stop?”
Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.”
Greg Bear (1951–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.”
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) said by 430 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The theme song states "YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE... YOU GOT THE POWER TO MAKE A CHANGE." Wow, thank you MTV, for making me feel empowered and independent, like only a multinational media conglomerate can.”
“I subscribe to an email service from CNN called "CNN Breaking News." Basically every time shit hits the fan, you're supposed to receive an email. Most of the "breaking news" I've received has been as earth shattering as an actor arrested for drunk driving. Wow, now excuse me while I change my freshly soiled boxers.”
“4 example the other day i saw a black person walking down the street and i was like "omg a negro" but instead of walking on the other side i said "what would rumsfeld do?" so i stayed on the sidewalk. when he came up to me i wanted to show him that i have no problems with people of color so i said "hey" and offered him my spare change before he could even ask.”
“The head of state Has called for me by name But I don't have time for him It's gonna be a glorious day I feel my luck could change”
Thom Yorke (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source