For anyone considering change, reading the wise words that others have said may provide some inspiration, motivation or help. Here are quotes on change arranged in alphabetical order and according to whether the word “change” is actually used in the quote or not.
Change is a part of life. We face many changes in life and they can be challenging.
This site is dedicated to making the move to working as a consultant, freelancer or contractor and growing in these areas- a big change in work and personal life.
Many of us face big decisions about planned, necessary or unexpected changes in our lives.
Here are the quotes:
Quotes using the word “change”
- “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” — Maya Angelou
- “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” — Robert Anthony
- “Change in all things is sweet.” — Aristotle
- “A tiny change today brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”—Richard Bach
- “You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy.” — C. Joy Bell
- “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by discomforts.” — Arnold Bennett
- “You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Roy T. Bennett
- “Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.” — A. C. Benson
- “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson
- “Miracles happen every day. Change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you.” — Jon Bon Jovi
- “Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream.” — Debby Boone
- “Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.” — David Bowie
- “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” — Nathaniel Branden
- “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” — Brene Brown
- “Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.”—H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
- “Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” — Carol Burnett
- “The key to change…is to let go of fear.”— Rosanne Cash
- “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.” — Stephen Chbosky
- “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” — Winston Churchill
- “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” — Confucius
- “There are three constants in life…change, choice and principles.”— Stephen Covey
- “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin
- “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”— Simone de Beauvoir
- “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”— Jimmy Dean
- “Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.” — Walt Disney
- “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.” — Benjamin Disraeli
- “If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.” — Mary Douglas
- “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” — Wayne W. Dyer
- “There is nothing so stable as change.” — Bob Dylan
- “Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.” — Clint Eastwood
- “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” — Albert Einstein
- “We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.” — Harrison Ford
- “All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another.” — Anatole France
- “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.” — Ellen Glasgow
- “If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.” — William Glasser
- “Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
- “Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” — Mandy Hale
- “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” — Sydney J. Harris
- “I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” — Stephen Hawking
- “The world doesn’t change in front of your eyes, it changes behind your back.” ― Terry Hayes
- “In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.” — Jimi Hendrix
- “If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.” — Katharine Hepburn
- “There is nothing permanent except change.” — Heraclitus
- “Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” — Frank Herbert
- “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” — Hermann Hesse
- “Moving doesn’t change who you are. It only changes the view outside your window.” — Rachel Hollis
- “To change what you get, you must change who you are.” — Vernon Howard
- “Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.” — Victor Hugo
- “Change is not an event, it’s a process.”— Cheryl James
- “To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.” — William James
- “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” — Steve Jobs
- “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.”— Steve Jobs
- “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” — Carl Jung
- “The more things change, the more they are the same.” — Alphonse Karr
- “Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.” — Nikos Kazantzakis
- “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” — Helen Keller
- “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
- “Progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.” — Robert Kennedy
- “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.” — Charles Kettering
- “It doesn’t matter how strong your opinions are. If you don’t use your power for positive change, you are indeed part of the problem.” — Coretta Scott King
- “A change is as good as a rest.”—Stephen King
- “The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.” — Barbara Kingsolver
- “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.” — Jack Layton
- “You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.” — Timothy Leary
- “When in doubt, choose change.” — Lily Leung
- “If you don’t change with the times, the times are going to change you.”— Marv Levy
- “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
- “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
- ”One of the most difficult things is not to change society – but to change yourself.” – Nelson Mandela
- “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
- “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” — John Maxwell
- “Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For, indeed, that’s all who ever have.” — Margaret Mead
- “Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.” — Bryant H. McGill
- “It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.” — Mignon McLaughlin
- “The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” — Rupert Murdoch
- “Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.” — Elon Musk
- “Ignorance is always afraid of change.” — Jawaharlal Nehru
- “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” — Barack Obama
- “Change takes courage.”— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
- “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” — Flannery O’Connor
- “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the game.”— Randy Pausch
- “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”— Norman Vincent Peale
- “Just because everything is different doesn’t mean anything has changed.” — Irene Peter
- “Change brings opportunity.” — Nido Qubein
- “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” — Hugh Prather
- “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next.” — Gilda Radner
- “The moment of change is the only poem.” — Adrienne Rich
- “Growth and comfort do not coexist.” — Ginni Rometty
- “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi
- “Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.” — Keri Russell
- “Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.”— Robin Sharma
- “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” — George Bernard Shaw
- “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” — Gail Sheehy
- “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” — Mary Shelley
- “Money and success don’t change people. They merely amplify what is already there.” — Will Smith
- “A wise man changes his mind, a fool never will.” — Spanish proverb
- “I don’t know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.” — Nicholas Sparks
- “This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change.”— Taylor Swift
- “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” — Mother Teresa
- “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
- “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy
- “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”— Leo Tolstoy
- “Things do not change; we change.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” — Harriet Tubman
- “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
- “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” — Lao Tzu
- “You must welcome change as the rule, but not as your ruler.” — Denis Waitley
- “Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable and remove yourself from the unacceptable.” — Denis Waitley
- “The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.” — Lech Walesa
- “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” — Andy Warhol
- “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.” — Alan Watts
- “Change before you have to.” — Jack Welch
- “There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.” — Kate Douglas Wiggin
- “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” — Harold Wilson
- “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson
- “The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” — Oprah Winfrey
- “The good and bad things are what form us as people…change makes us grow.”— Kate Winslet
- “And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves.” ― Virginia Woolf “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.” — Malala Yousafzai
Quotes on change that don’t use the word change:
- “If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” — Roy T. Bennett
- “What’s dangerous is not to evolve.” — Jeff Bezos
- “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” — Bertolt Brecht
- “You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.” — Johnny Cash
- “Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.”—Alain de Botton
- “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Frederick Douglass
- “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you’d like to act.” ― Bob Dylan
- “How wonderful is it that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank
- “All things are difficult before they are easy.” — Thomas Fuller
- “Bending beats breaking.” ― Betty Greene
- “Every day the clock resets. Your wins don’t matter. Your failures don’t matter. Don’t stress on what was, fight for what could be.”—Sean Higgins
- “A bend in the road is not the end of the road…unless you fail to make the turn.”—Helen Keller
- “If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
- “There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” — C.S. Lewis
- “Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” — Raymond Lindquist
- “The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” — Steve Maraboli
- “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow
- “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
- “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” — Dolly Parton
- “All is flux, nothing stays still.” ― Plato
- “Let him who would move the world first move himself.”— Socrates
- “Good things take time.” — John Wooden
Conclusion
I hope these quotes are inspiring or provoke thought in dealing with or embracing change.
If the change is moving to consulting, freelancing or consulting you can find information on Getting Started and blog posts, such as So, you want to be a consultant, Learning about consulting, and articles on freelancing.
