Change

When I was 28 years old, I thought it would be great to have a movie about my life, but when I was 28, like when I was 16, I was egotistical and self-centered. We all grow up. Hopefully we get wiser. Age brings wisdom and fatherhood changes one's life completely. I consider my past immoral, unethical and illegal. It is something I am not proud of. I am proud that I have been able to turn my life around. . . .
~ Frank William Abagnale, Jr., Abagnale & Associates (3 September 2002). Comments from Frank W. Abagnale Concerning the book and the film, Catch Me If You Can

System Dynamics: Things today are the things of yesterday plus any changes. The changes are the result of the things of yesterday. Now extend this to tomorrow.
~ William S. Bonnell

As a person, living in New Zealand for a year and a half has changed me as well. In some ways, I feel Hobbit-y, you know?
~ Billy Boyd, in SPX magazine (August 2001).

The department needs to clearly understand there's a new sheriff in town.
~ William J. Bratton, The Associated Press (5 October 2002). New LAPD Chief Outlines Reform Plan

Change can happen at any time, but transition comes along when one chapter of your life is over and another is waiting in the wings to make its entrance.
~ William Bridges, The Way of Transition: Embracing Life's Most Difficult Moments (2000). Chapter 1: Change and Transition

Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives.
~ William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980). Chapter 4: Endings

The outer forms of our lives can change in an instant, but the inner reorientation that brings us back into a vital relation to people and activity takes time.
~ William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980).

I'm going to start another chapter in a book I started a long time ago. It's going to be traumatic, but not disabling.
~ Willie L. Brown, Jr., The San Francisco Chronicle (7 January 2004). Willie Brown: difficult transition: Life out of office will 'be traumatic'

Thus change the forms of being. Thus arise
Races of living things, glorious in strength,
And perish, as the quickening breath of God
Fills them, or is withdrawn.
~ William Cullen Bryant, The Prairies (1832).

Weep not that the world changes -- did it keep
A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832). Sonnet -- Mutation (written in 1824)

Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.
~ William S. Burroughs

Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands (1987).

Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.
~ William S. Burroughs, Just One Fix (1992 single). Quick Fix

Tradition is the father of persecutions, the uncle of falsehoods, the brother of ignorance, and the grandsire of a thousand hideous sins against sweetness and light.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, The Friendship of Art (1904). On Tradition

I don't think we've felt hopeless. I think that we just haven't been as successful as we'd hoped. Hopefully some of the changes I'll make will help the guys, and put them in situations where they can be more successful.
~ Bill Cartwright, The Associated Press (29 December 2001). Cartwright man in the middle for the Bulls again

Politically, economically and technologically, the world is changing at an unprecedented and sometimes alarming pace.
~ William S. Cohen, Statement to the Senate Armed Service Committee (22 January 1997).

All zeal for a reform, that gives offence
To peace and charity, is mere pretence.
~ William Cowper, from The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper (1842). Charity (written in 1782)

Still ending, and beginning still.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book III. The Garden

Change is such hard work.
~ Billy Crystal

The new year begins in a snow-storm of white vows.
~ George William Curtis

Some folks are continually making changes. I flatter myself that I like new ventures and new experiences. But when it comes to fundamentals I believe in finding the right foundations and building on them. I'm a poor changer.
~ William H. Danforth, Monday Morning Message (1955)

It struck me while I was sitting here; everything changes but the sea.
~ William B. Davis

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
~ W. Edwards Deming

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.
~ William Orville Douglas

If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.
~ William Orville Douglas, Points of Rebellion (1969). A Start Towards Reconstructing Our Society

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

The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated. . . . It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.
~ William Orville Douglas, Points of Rebellion (1969). The Legions of Dissent

Change starts when someone sees the next step.
~ William Drayton

Caesar hoped to reform men by changing institutions and laws; Christ wished to remake institutions, and lessen laws, by changing men.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume III (1944). Caesar and Christ

Continue to express your dissent and your needs, but remember to remain civilized, for you will sorely miss civilization if it is sacrified in the turbulence of change.
~ William James "Will" Durant

The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
~ Will Garcia

I think all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stiff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they have always been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.
~ John William Gardner, in The New York Times (21 July 1989).

The people who resist change will be confronted by the growing number of people who see that better ways . . . are available thanks to technology.
~ Bill Gates

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.
~ Bill Gates

We're talking about new waves, and new ways of thinking about the Internet, and that's going to keep all of our jobs very, very exciting.
~ Bill Gates

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Speech in Liverpool (28 June 1886).

If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior. In other words, begin to act the part, as well as you can, of the person you would rather be, the person you most want to become. Gradually, the old, fearful person will fade away.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

Revolutions are the produce of passion, not of sober and tranquil reason.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).

We are living through one of the most fundamental shifts in history -- a change in the actual belief structure of Western society. No economic, political, or military power can compare with the power of a change of mind. By deliberately changing their images of reality, people are changing the world.
~ Willis Harman, Global Mind Change: The Promise of the Last Years of the Twentieth Century (1988).

So society, when out of order, which it is whenever the interests of the many are regularly and outrageously sacrificed to those of the few, must be repaired, and either a reform or a revolution cleanse its corruptions and renew its elasticity.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation (written in 1828)

Changes are never easy to make. There is comfort and safety in tradition, but change must come, no matter how painful or expensive it may be.
~ William R. Hewlett, Address to MIT graduates (1986). Random Thoughts on Creativity

Change brings with it a plethora of opportunities that the more timid among us will miss.
~ William N. "Bill" Hodges, The Next Wave, Want To Lead? This Is What It Takes (1996).

We change whether we ought, or not.
~ William Dean Howells, Ragged Lady (1899).

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.
~ Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (1792). Chapter 16

When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition."
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

The printing of pictures, however, unlike the printing of words from moveable types, brought a completely new thing into existence . . . it made possible for the first time pictorial statements of a kind that could be exactly repeated during the effective life of the printing surface. This exact repetition of pictorial statements has had incalculable effects upon knowledge and thought, upon science and technology, of every kind. It is hardly too much to say that since the invention of writing there has been no more important invention than that of the exactly repeatable pictorial statement.
~ William M. Ivins, Jr. , Prints and Visual Communication (1953).

The greatest 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

The most violent revolutions in an individual's beliefs leave most of his old order standing. Time and space, cause and effect, nature and history, and one's own biography remain untouched. New truth is always a go-between, a smoother-over of transitions. It marries old opinion to new fact so as ever to show a minimum of jolt, a maximum of continuity.
~ William James, from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). What Pragmatism Means

To change your life -- start immediately do it flamboyantly, no exceptions.
~ William James

Don't go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before.
~ Billy Joel, in The Stranger (1977 album). Just the Way You Are

Times have sure changed. Yesterday a bum asked me if I could spare $2.75 for a double cappuccino with no foam.
~ Bill Jones

We need change, but we don't need chaos.
~ Bill Kennard

No one changes the world who isn't obsessed.
~ Billie Jean King, The San Francisco Chronicle (8 August 1978).

We think we can change everything and we can change nothing. Our very thoughts and motives and ideals are only bits of the Eternal Force that holds the stars balanced in the skies and keeps the earth for a moment solid to our feet. I cannot move it. I cannot affect it. I cannot shake it. It alone is.
~ William Lane, The Workingman's Paradise (1892).

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another.
~ William Law

Change is inevitable . . . adapting to change is unavoidable, it's how you do it that sets you together or apart.
~ William Ngwako Maphoto

Perfection seems to be nothing more than a complete adaptation to the environment; but the environment is constantly changing, so perfection can never be more than transitory.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1901 entry

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

You just have to look at the right place in the DNA of the organisms involved to find how their "developmental codes" changed in the process of going from one type of organism to another. In our case, it was the change from a crustacean to insect. In a similar manner, we will one day understand how the developmental codes changed a few million years ago in early hominids, resulting in one branch becoming chimpanzees, and another branch becoming humans.
~ William McGinnis, United Press International (6 February 2002). Genes give clues to body shape evolution

We're going through a time compression now in our history, in our economy. What used to take 10 years to evolve has gone to 5, then 4, 3, 2, 1, and now six months. And so the idea of management as some sort of science, with certain principles from which you never deviate, no longer applies. The only practice that's now constant is the practice of constantly accommodating to change -- and if you're not changing constantly, you're probably not going to be accommodating to the reality of your world.
~ William G. McGowan

If you change the belief first, changing the action is easier.
~ Peter McWilliams, DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts (1994). Part Two: Built for Success

My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy . . . but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.
~ William Lamb (2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne), Quoted in Lord M (1954).

New ages don't arrive overnight, or without "blood, sweat, and tears."
~ Bill Moyers, Speech at the "Take Back America Conference," Washington DC (4 June 2003). Acceptance of America's Future Lifetime Leadership Award

The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry me away.
~ Willie Nelson

What has changed is that nothing has changed. . . . That's what has made me more unhappy than everything else.
~ Willie Nelson, The Associated Press (20 September 2002). Nelson Still Pushing 'Farm Aid'

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
~ Willie Nelson, Quoted in Criswell Freeman The Wisdom of the West (1997).

Even a thought, even a possibility, can shatter us and transform us.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

When we have to change our minds about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

All great reforms require one to dare a lot to win a little.
~ William L. O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave: A History of Feminism in America (1971).

Everywhere the old order changeth, and happy those who can change with it.
~ William Osler, Address at McGill Medical School (1 October 1894). Teaching and Thinking

There will be changes here, there's no doubt about that.
~ Bill Parcells, The Associated Press (2 January 2003). Parcells gets $17.1 million deal to coach fourth team

We ourselves are always changing -- and what to-day we have but a small desire to attempt, to-morrow becomes the object of our passionate aspirations.
~ William Pinkney, Speech in the U.S. Senate on the Missouri Question (15 February 1820).

Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.
~ C. William Pollard, The Soul of the Firm (December 1996).

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians a joke.
~ Will Rogers

One revolution is like one cocktail, it justs gets you organized for the next.
~ Will Rogers

People don't change under governments. Governments change. People remain the same.
~ Will Rogers

It's nice to know that we don't need to wait 'til tomorrow; we can start to change the world today!
~ Dr. Wil Rose

"Change" is scientific, "progress" is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell, from Unpopular Essays (1950). VII: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish

This transformation in kids -- from flashing dragonflies, so to say, to sticky water-surface worms slowly slipping downstream -- is noticed with pride by society and with mortification by God. . . .
~ William Saroyan

I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward.
~ William Henry Seward, The Irrepressible Conflict. Speech given at Rochester, New York (25 October 1858).

Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest. Act I, scene ii

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
~ William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

In converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings;
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard III

Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part II. Act V, scene v

Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

I'm profoundly changed. There's a bittersweet emotion that I feel from playing this role. . . . I want the world to be different because I was here. However lofty or crazy or delusional that may sound, I want people's lives to be better because I was here.
~ Will Smith, ABC TV "Primetime" (13 December 2001). Taking on Ali: The Fight of Will Smith's Life

Those black eyes I once so praised
Now are hard and sharp and cold;
Where's the love that through them blazed?
Where's the tenderness of old?
~ William Wetmore Story, in Yale Book of American Verse (1912). Black Eyes

Never change a winning game; always change a losing one.
~ Bill Tilden

Nothing is this world is so marvelous as the transformation that a soul undergoes when the light of faith descends upon the light of reason.
~ W. (William) Bernard Ullathorne, The Endowments of Man (1880).

Sept. 11, most people agree, changed everything including, it now appears, the economic map of the United States.
~ Mary Williams Walsh, in The New York Times (30 September 2001). Many Once-Thriving Cities Are Suddenly Hurting

Change, like sunshine, can be a friend or a foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk.
~ William Arthur Ward

Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon, everything's different.
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Consistency is only a paste jewel that cheap men cherish.
~ William Allen White, in The Emporia Gazette (1923).

It's a message that's neither liberal nor conservative in the traditional sense. It's a message that simply says it's time for a change.
~ Bill Whittaker (on Dukakis' campaign theme), CBS TV "Evening News" (1 July 1988).

The onlooker had better wipe the sympathy off his face. What he has seen is a revolution. . . .
~ William H. Whyte, Jr.

Change is the watchword of Progression.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Poems of Passion (1883). The Year Outgrows The Spring

We tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new.
This restless craving in the souls of men
Spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Poems of Passion (1883). The Year Outgrows The Spring

The reformers' preferred metaphor is "leveling the playing field." They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers.
~ George F. Will

I've discovered that there's another way of living that I have never known. Things have changed.
~ Andy Williams

When we become aware of ourselves, we find the potential for radical transformation. If you want to change, that's where you have to start from. If you really wake up, if you really notice, it's inevitable that change will take place.
~ Angel Kyodo Williams, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace (2000).

Any time there's a major change, whether it's going into a relationship, getting out of a relationship, moving to a new city, a death -- that usually provides a catalyst for an explosion of creativity.
~ Lucinda Williams, in Entertainment Weekly (6 June 2001). Cow Girl Uninterrupted

It seems unwise to attempt to bring about major changes permitting positive euthanasia until we have made major progress in changing laws and policies pertaining to negative euthanasia.
~ Robert H. Williams, M.D., in Northwest Medicine (July 1970). Numbers, Types and Duration of Human Lives

I have neighbors, I have friends, and now I have to pick up and go. It's the off-season. I don't have to be here right now but I choose to. It's going to be hard to have to transplant somewhere else.
~ Ricky Williams, in <WDSU TheNewOrleansChannel.com (8 March 2002). Ricky Sounds Off On Trade Talk

I tell people I was a caterpillar locked in a cocoon when I was in New Orleans, but now I feel like I finally have my wings.
~ Ricky Williams, ESPN The Magazine (16 September 2002). Redemption Song

I was the walking epitome of furshirr meets yo'ass. On my first day in New York, I went to school dressed like a typical California kid: I wore tie-up yoga pants and a Hawaiian shirt, and I kept stepping in dog sh[*]t with my thongs.
~ Robin Williams, Playboy magazine (Interview; 1982).

This is where the difficulty lies. We are lucky when that underground current can be tapped and the secret spring of all our lives will send up its pure water. It seldom happens. A thousand trivialities push themselves to the front, our lying habits of everyday speech and thought are foremost, telling us that that is what "they" want to hear. Tell them something else.
~ William Carlos Williams

Times change and forms and their meanings alter. Thus new poems are necessary. Their forms must be discovered in the living language of their day, or old forms, embodying exploded concepts, will tyrannize over the imagination.
~ William Carlos Williams, A Note on Poetry (1938)

Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
~ Marianne Williamson, Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage (1994).

Prayer enables us to transform the world, because it transforms us.
~ Marianne Williamson

We embrace the idea -- advanced by both ancient philosophers and modern physicists -- that the world is one. Everything connects to everything; therefore, as we change, the world cannot but change with us.
~ Marianne Williamson, Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness, and Making Miracles (2002). Introduction: Reclaiming Our Magic

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetary.
~ Harold Wilson, in The New York Times (24 January 1967).

Tastes change. There's no sense in looking back.
~ Kemmons Wilson (on the original Holiday Inn in Memphis TN), USA TODAY (23 May 2002). Come Inn off the highway

What we perceive depends on what we believe is possible, and as the latter changes, the former will change.
~ Robert Anton Wilson, in Kindred Spirit Magazine, Issue 40 (Interview; Autumn 1997). Radical Intelligence

Life is arched with changing skies:
Rarely are they what they seem:
Children we of smiles and sighs --
Much we know, but more we dream.
~ William Winter, Light and Shadow

It is not now as it hath been of yore; --
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more!
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes (1807). Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
~ William Butler Yeats, Easter, 1916 (1921)

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot,
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places but the lash goes on.
~ William Butler Yeats, from New Poems (1938). The Great Day

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921). The Second Coming