Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Change

"One of the great arts in living is to learn the art of accurately appraising values. Everything that we think, that we earn, that we have given to us, that in any way touches our consciousness, has its own value. These values are apt to change with the mood, with time, or because of circumstances. We cannot safely tie to any material value. The values of all material possessions change continually, sometimes over night. The real values are those that stay by you, give you happiness and enrich you. They are the human values." - George Matthew Adams

"In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims; because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits." -

"The regeneration of a sinner is an evidence of power in the highest sphere - moral nature; with the highest prerogative - to change nature; and operating to the highest result - not to create originally, which is great; but to create anew, which is greater." - William Arthur

"Unrequited love is the meaning of life. We’re here to love but not to be loved, to give but not receive. Our mission in this world is to improve humanity and leave a better history than we found. Only selfless love has such power. Only love without interest or expectation of reward can change human beings... To give love without receiving love is the truest love and brings the greatest happiness there is in life." - Adolfo Barcella

"There is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

"Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that's all." - Tristan Bernard, born Paul Bernard

"The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out." - Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

"When Americans are morally divided, it is appropriate that our laws reflect that fact... Our popular institutions, the legislative and executive branches, were structured to provide safety to achieve compromise when we are divided, to slow change, to dilute absolutisms... They are designed, in short, to do the very things that abstract generalizations about moral principles and the just society tend to bring into contempt." - Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork

"Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster." - Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

"There is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord... As space spreads everywhere, and all things move and change within it, but it moves not nor changes, so I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but the similitude and mental image; cometh thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life - death shall no longer divide thee from whom thou lovest. I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within - gazest thou upon me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal. Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off - thou shalt slough it away as a man sloughs his mortal body. Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world - the world of equality - to swim in the ocean, my child, of me and my love. (Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblance of this outer world, but its alienations and deaths and mortal sufferings - all for this? For joy, ah! joy unutterable!)" -

"Change, change - we all covet change." -

"We must be fond of the world, even in order to change it." - G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

"Repentance, to be of any avail, must work a change of heart and conduct." - Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

"Be just in all thy actions, and if join’d with those that are not, never change thy mind." - John Denham, fully Sir John Denham

"The search for static security - in the law and elsewhere - is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts." -

"We can change our whole life and the attitude of people around us simply by changing ourselves." - Rudolf Driekurs

"People may change their minds as often as their coats, and new sets of rules of conduct may be written every week, but the fact remains that human nature has not changed and does not change, that inherent human beliefs stay the same; the fundamental rules of human conduct continue to hold." - Lammot du Pont

"Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words." - George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

"The wolf may change his coat but not his disposition." -

"Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of lie, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative." - Edward Everett

"Change, not habit, is what gets most of us down; habit is the stabilizer of human society, change accounts for its progress." - William Feather

"Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them. It gets the name of willfulness when it will not admit of a lawful change to the better. Therefore constancy without knowledge cannot be always good. In things ill it is not virtue, but an absolute vice." - Owen Feltham

"You have to stop in order to change direction." -

"If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change." - Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard

"There is a danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism." - Henry George

"One man can completely change the character of a country, and the industry of its people, but dropping a single seed in fertile soil." - John Clayton Gifford

"The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes and change the order of nations." - Henry Giles

"We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action." -

"Times change and we change with them." - Raphael Holinshed

"Ideas are born, they struggle, triumph, change and they are transformed; but is there a dead idea which in the end does not live on, transformed into a broader and clearer goal?" -

"Many people are willing to rearrange the outer things in their lives, but few are willing to rearrange the priorities of their inner worlds. If your consciousness doesn’t change, you will continually re-create the same old circumstances." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

"New thoughts, new beliefs, new feelings, and new discoveries of our spiritual nature bring on inner change and make us act in new ways." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

"The great revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives." - William James

"To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions." - William James

"I am unfaithful to my own possibilities when I await from a change of circumstances what I can do on my own initiative." -

"Fear is the energy to do our best in a new situation. Guilt is the energy for personal change. Unworthiness keeps us on track. Hurt feelings remind us how much we care. Anger is the energy for change. Discouragement reveals our courage." - John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

"To do nothing is in every man’s power; we can never want an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest to motion, from privation to reality." -

"There is an aliveness in people who are living life and not merely observing or intellectualizing it... During the time of catastrophic change, each individual has the opportunity to feel fully alive and resource-filled-awake far beyond the daily soporific states of consciousness in which most of us reside. Living on an edge heightens the human awareness. It does not dull it." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could be better changed in ourselves." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"This spectacle of old age would be unendurable if we did not know that our psyche reaches into a region held captive neither by change in time nor by limitation of place. In that form of being our birth is a death and our death is a birth. The scales of the whole hang balanced." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Self-knowledge is the primary step in conscious evolutionary change. When people confront and integrate their individual fears and limitations, they facilitate the confrontation and integration of our racial, national, and planetary fears. Lasting social change is only possible when individual consciousness has first been changed." - Gloria D. Karpinski

"We are indestructible. While our form may change, our true identity does not. We are not our careers, our money, our relationships, our successes, or our failures. Roles come and go. We create them because they offer us perfect settings in which to explore ourselves and learn." - Gloria D. Karpinski

"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." - Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

"Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Whether happiness or unhappiness, freedom or slavery, in short whether good or evil results from an improved environment depends largely upon how the change has been brought about, upon the methods by which the physical results have been reached, and in what spirit and for what purpose the fruits of that change are used. Because a higher standard of living, a greater productiveness and a command over nature are not good in and of themselves do not mean that we cannot make good of them, that they cannot be a source of inner strength." -

"We say that the truth will make us free. Yes, but that truth is a thousand truths which grow and change." - Walter Lippmann

"The foolish and dead alone never change their opinions." - James Russell Lowell

"The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it." - L. W. Lynett

"Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities. And it must be understood that a prince, and especially a new prince, cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion." -

"God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves." -