Quotes About Change In History

“But history is that rare woman who doesn't like to look at herself in the mirror. History, when she finds herself in front of one, wipes and wipes its surface at though in this way she might change her face to something better”

— Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“When social critics deplore the materialism of our time and its preoccupation with money, fame, and superficial values, they overlook that the driving force behind the changes we have seen
one of the greatest periods of change in history
has been thought. It wasn't big bucks or social status that drove this change. It was, and is, the force of the play of the mind. As materialistic as we may be, playful thinking got us here.”

— Edward M. Hallowell

“You see gods have great power, but only humans have creativity, the power to change history rather than simply repeat it. Humans can ... how do you moderns say it ... think outside the cup.”

— Rick Riordan

“Never question the power of one! Throughout history it has been the actions of only one person who has in inspired the movement of change.”

— Steve Maraboli

“Just as one decision can change your destiny, so can one prayer. If you were to map out your spiritual history, you would find countless answers to prayer at key intersections along the way. Before you were even born, even named, many of you had parents and grandparents who prayed for you. At critical ages and stages, family and friends interceded on your behalf. And thousands of complete strangers have prayed for you in ways you aren't even aware of. The sum total of those prayers is your prayer genealogy.”

— Mark Batterson

“FOR MOST OF human history, education was job training. Hunters, farmers, and warriors taught the young to hunt, farm, and fight. Children of the ruling class received instruction in the arts of war and governance, but this too was intended first and foremost as preparation for the roles they would assume later in society, not for any broader purpose. All that began to change twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece.”

— Fareed Zakaria

“There are people who desperately want to change the world.
I wonder if it could be measured, because the world is already
in the state of continuously change since the beginning of time.
Or they may just want their names etched nicely on men history.”

— Toba Beta

“I was always anti-marriage. I didn't understand monogamy. I couldn't figure out how that could last. And then I met Bryn and I started to understand the beauty of constancy and history and change and going on the roller coaster with someone - of having a partner in life.”

— Maria Bello

“Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists.”

— Thomas Friedman

“With my history, unfortunately, with my family suffering through gun violence, it's something that I feel passionately about, that even though the odds are certainly always uphill, that doesn't mean that I will stop fighting to try to change that.”

— Carolyn McCarthy

“As a writer of fiction who deals with technology, I necessarily deal with the history of technology and the history of technologically induced social change. I roam up and down it in a kind of special way because I roam down it into history, which is invariably itself a speculative affair.”

— William Gibson

“In two weeks a man could completely refashion his history; he could walk all the way to Ohio or Iowa, change his name and his accent, disappear into another life. In the woods, footprints faded, the wind rose up to disperse of clothing, flesh became grass.”

— Alice Hoffman

“History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.”

— Bill Watterson

“If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change.”

— Noam Chomsky

“For all history up to the end of the Cold War, summit meetings were historic and dramatic occasions, when leaders who controlled the destiny of much of the world met to change the world.”

— Conrad Black

“I existed on my own terms. I was different my entire life. Some called me divergent, wild, crazy, unpredictable and unconformed-an apostate to the rules of the majority. I called myself God's creation and found purpose in the madness. When that day came, I didn't allow other people to dictate how I should feel or act. I learned there was no shame in imperfection because history had shown being different had the power to change perspectives and eventually the world. This is when I realized that flaws had responsibility. This was the day that I learned I was truly BLESSED.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“The actions of a single person can change the course of the world and create history.”

— Michael Scott

“Conformity may give you a quiet life; it may even bring you to a University Chair. But all change in history, all advance, comes from the nonconformists. If there had been no trouble-makers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.”

— A.J.P. Taylor

“Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" ... The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.”

— Richard Rohr

“This famous quote hangs over my desk, as well as the desks of many people with the hubris and optimism to believe they can change the world for the better. It seems implausible, yet time and again history has proven it true. Virtually every major shift in cultural history can trace its origins to the work of a small group, often gathered around an innovative thinker or body of thought.”

— Alan AtKisson

“The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.”

— James Q. Wilson

“Mastery is a blind alley. Since, moreover, he cannot renounce mastery and
become a slave again, the eternal destiny of masters is to live unsatisfied or to be killed. The master
serves no other purpose in history than to arouse servile consciousness, the only form of consciousness
that really creates history. The slave, in fact, is not bound to his condition, but wants to change it. Thus,
unlike his master, he can improve himself, and what is called history is nothing but the effects of his long
efforts to obtain real freedom. Already, by work, by his transformation of the natural world into a
technical world, he manages to escape from the nature which was the basis of his slavery in that he did
not know how to raise himself above it by accepting death.”

— Albert Camus

“The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations
there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole.
an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself
is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.”

— Jean-Henri Merle D'Aubigne

“I thought poetry could change everything, could change history and could humanize, and I think that the illusion is very necessary to push poets to be involved and to believe, but now I think that poetry changes only the poet.”

— Mahmoud Darwish

“Black History is enjoying the life of our ancestors who paved the way for every African-American. No matter what color you are, the history of Blacks affected everyone; that's why we should cherish and respect Black history. Black history changed America and is continuing to change and shape our country. Black history is about everyone coming together to better themselves and America. Black history is being comfortable in your own skin no matter what color you are. Black history makes me proud of where I came from and where I am going in life.”

— Bernice Mosby

“No real change in history has ever been achieved by discussions.”

— Subhas Chandra Bose

“A timely and incisive look into the history, politics, and future of the Muslim Brotherhood by the foremost expert on Islamism in Egypt. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham has constructed a detailed account of how the Brotherhood confronts the challenges before it, and why and when it embraces change. Everyone concerned with the future of Egypt should read this book.”

— Vali Nasr

“We need a revolution in the West: not violent overthrow, but a willingness to take responsibility for the course of history being set forth in our names. We need a revolution determined to activate broad, inclusive social change.”

— Christina Baldwin

“Currently, we allow our political and business leaders to get away with murder. Now is the time to change that. We need direct liability for those who are destroying our future and this planet. We need fast, profound and systemic change. History only moves forward when courageous people get up and act. That's why I support this citizens' initiative to recognise ecocide as the crime it is.”

— Kumi Naidoo

“However much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history the early phase on Republican virtue, the later on Imperial grandeur the fact remains that classicism depended on a fixed and rational philosophy; whereas the spirit of the Revolution was one of change and of emotion.”

— Kenneth Clark

“There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress.”

— Howard Zinn

“History has shown that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, in fact, dramatically change the balance of the court in many critical areas, such as abortion, the privacy debate expansion and child pornography.”

— Sam Brownback

“Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.”

— Jacqueline Novogratz

“Plans made in the nursery Can change the course of history”

— Amos Bronson Alcott

“It's a very exciting time in the history of this country, to even see people responding to a different way of doing business and really wanting to make a change.”

— Susan Sarandon

“You keep plugging away
that's the way social change takes place. That's the way every social change in history has taken place: by a lot of people, who nobody ever heard of, doing work.”

— Noam Chomsky

“History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repitition, it's been going on since the beginning of time. History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use energy of the wind, the seas, the atom.”

— Paulo Coelho

“Perhaps for the first time in history, human-kind has the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb; to foster far greater interdependency than anyone can manage, and to accelerate change far faster than anyone's ability to keep pace.”

— Peter Senge

“Sooner I'd try to change history than turn political, than try convincing others to write letters or to vote or to march or to do something they didn't already feel like doing.”

— Richard Bach

“We are the "can do" country. We adjust to situations better than any people in the history of the world ... We adjust to change.”

— Dan Rather