Quotes About Significant Change

“Human beings are tool-making animals. Since the prehistoric era, we have created and used a wide variety of objects.
But now a significant change is about to occur.
In the near future, we will simply become another object that can be monitored, tracked and controlled within a vast machine.”

— John Twelve Hawks

“Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same party with different faces and that was why, no matter how many promises each leader made, significant change rarely transpired.”

— James Morcan

“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don't mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”

— Scott Adams

“As I saw it,
all my mother's life, my father
held her down, like
lead strapped to her ankles.
She was
buoyant by nature;
she wanted to travel,
go to the theater, go to museums.
What he wanted
was to lie on the couch
with the Times
over his face,
so that death, when it came,
wouldn't seem a significant change.”

— Louise Glück

“If you have put your faith in Christ and have spent significant time in the Word of God, the tough times can be like a magnet that draws you to the Lord Jesus. Nothing is going to happen - ever - that will catch Jesus Christ by surprise. He is able to help His children work through anything, and not a single thing is going to happen in the future that can change that fact.”

— David Jeremiah

“And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by forces over which we have no more control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. What are we to do? We must use whatever methods we can to understand the movement of the universe around us and time our actions so that we are not fighting the currents, but moving with them. Mameha took up my almanac again and this time selected several dates over the following weeks that would be auspicious for significant change. I”

— Arthur Golden

“Technological change is neither additive nor subtractive. It is ecological. I mean "ecological" in the same sense as the word is used by environmental scientists. One significant change generates total change. If you remove the caterpillars from a given habitat, you are not left with the same environment minus caterpillars: you have a new environment, and you have reconstituted the conditions of survival; the same is true if you add caterpillars to an environment that has had none. This is how the ecology of media works as well. A new technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.”

— Neil Postman

“Much of the difficulty in attempting to restructure American and other societies arises form this resistance by groups with vested interests in the status quo. Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and its resisted.”

— Carl Sagan

“One might have thought that the most significant change in the film industry that would come about with a transition from the communist economy to capitalism would fundamentally concern the sources of funding.”

— Andrzej Wajda

“We, as a country, have not seen a significant change in immigration policy in nearly two decades, even though all Americans agree that current immigration policy is outdated and malfunctioning.”

— Raul Grijalva

“If our minds are like a garden, then emotions are like the different flowers that bloom and wither in it all year round, according to the season. Emotions sometimes bring dynamism and significant change to our lives, but we must never be led around by them.”

— Ilchi Lee

“What messes us up a lot in this life is setting our expectations way too high and then being ashamed when we fail. What is worse is when we allow other people to make us feel ashamed for failing. What is worse than that is hiding and lying about our failure. It's ok to fail, especially when it's a significant life change and you gotta stand up for that right in this life.”

— Tanya Masse

“Whether sexual orientation can change or not, hearts can change and turn any sexual orientation into an occasion for the glory of Christ. Those with same-sex attraction glorify Christ through sexual abstinence and through the enrichment of significant Christ-exalting relationships in other ways.”

— John Piper

“I'm still thinking and hoping there's an opportunity for people to have better lives and that significant change can occur.”

— Tracy Chapman

“Cereal production in the rain-fed areas still remains relatively unaffected by the impact of the green revolution, but significant change and progress are now becoming evident in several countries.”

— Norman Borlaug

“Being ready isn't enough; you have to be prepared for a promotion or any other significant change.”

— Pat Riley

“A revolution simply means great change, significant change, and that's how I'm defining it - great change for the better, brought about through non-violent means.”

— Aung San Suu Kyi

“The European auto industry made a commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an average of 140 grams per kilometer. But then there was a significant change in what customers wanted in their vehicles.”

— Martin Winterkorn

“From the 1970s, there has been a significant change in the U.S. economy, as planners, private and state, shifted it toward financialization and the offshoring of production, driven in part by the declining rate of profit in domestic manufacturing.”

— Noam Chomsky

“There was something about her mouth that made me feel possibilities ... the way a train ticket holds possibilities, the way a boat docked at sunset does, the way a voice on the radio announcing victory does. A mouth can have that it can seem brave, and bold. Finite and infinite. After a war, you need both of those things. "Why don't you kiss me, she said. "Celebrate a new world." And so I did. I could not forget that kiss. I still cannot. I put my fingertips to her face. Indeed,changed that day, but the change in life was no smaller or less significant. The moment took my sorrow and made it swarm the streets in victory, shouting in joy and rightness, and from that I have never quite recovered.”

— Deb Caletti

“The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.”

— J.G. Ballard

“What it needed was a subtle but significant change in presentation. The students needed to know how to fit the tetanus stuff into their lives; the addition of the map and the times when the shots were available shifted the booklet from an abstract lesson in medical risk-a lesson no different from the countless other academic lessons they had received over their academic career-to a practical and personal piece of medical advice. And”

— Anonymous.

“After every war, there was a significant change in the music, and I can understand how that happened. If you participate in protecting the country, you think you can be part of it, but you come back home and it's worse than ever.”

— Quincy Jones

“If we hope for more significant therapeutic change, we must encourage our patients to assume responsibility-that is, to apprehend how they themselves contribute to their distress.”

— Irvin D. Yalom

“Always look for these changing technology factors- any market that has a significant change in the underlying raw materials ... or enabling factors, is an environment that is about to change in a very significant way.”

— Aaron Levie

“Mitchell had answered that, as far as he understood them, mystical experiences were significant only to the extent that they changed a person's conception of reality, and if that changed conception led to a change in behavior and action, a loss of ego.”

— Jeffrey Eugenides

“Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“As President, my father will change the labor laws that were put into place at a time when women were not a significant portion of the workforce. And he will focus on making quality child care affordable and accessible for all.”

— Ivanka Trump

“Changing a planning tool or a method won't create significant change in the results we're getting in our lives-although the implied promise is that it will. It's not a matter of controlling things more, better, or faster; it's questioning the whole assumption of control.”

— Stephen R. Covey

“The number of hypotheses and theories about climate change are numerous. Quite naturally they have caught the public attention, as any proof of past climactic change points to the possibility of future climate change, which inevitably will have significant implications for global economics.”

— Eduard Bruckner

“Oil policy, policy toward the United States, policy toward Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, very unlikely, I think, to see significant change. These policies were the policies that had a wide family consensus. The question I think would be if the king becomes sick, whether you have weak Saudi leadership in the Arab world and the Middle East rather than strong Saudi leadership, but I think the fundamental policies will continue, the ones we're familiar with under King Abdullah.”

— Elliott Abrams

“We only need to walk or bike ten percent of the time to make a significant change in society. That is just two days of walking, bicycling or taking transit per month for a typical commuter.”

— Jeff Olson

“The consequences of man-made climate change are real and very significant.”

— Jeff Orlowski

“The computer field is intoxicated with change. We have seen galloping growth over a period of four decades and it still does not seem to be slowing down. The field is not mature yet and already it accounts for a significant percentage of the Gross National Product.”

— Fernando J. Corbato

“I am flattered that Bob Carter should ask me to launch what I think is a significant new book on climate change. I have developed a very high regard for Bob in the years that I have known him. He has been a terrific and leading voice in combatting the scare mongering that we have all been subjected to on the theory of anthropogenic global warming.”

— Nick Minchin

“More people more accepting of civil unions and gay marriage, which our pollster said was the most significant change they've seen on any social issue. So, this country is changing in a way.”

— Norah O'Donnell

“Fundamental renegotiation is very, very unlikely to produce any significant change”

— Vince Cable

“When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.”

— Owen Barfield

“The most significant change in a person's life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions.”

— William J. Johnston

“The one significant change is in fact the second significant change”

— Jonathan Pearce

“I discovered, to my amazement, that all through history there had been resistance ... and bitter, exaggerated, last-stitch resistance ... to every significant technological change that had taken place on earth. Usually the resistance came from those groups who stood to lose influence, status, money ... as a result of the change. Although they never advanced this as their reason for resisting it. It was always the good of humanity that rested upon their hearts.”

— Isaac Asimov

“It is certainly true that whatever a man may do or say, the most significant thing about him is what he thinks; and significant also is how he came to think it, why he continued to think it, or, if he did not continue, what the influences were which caused him to change his mind .”

— Albert J. Nock

“War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. That is, there will be very little significant change. It's going to take the redesign of our culture and values.”

— Jacque Fresco

“Not all revolutionaries set out to change the world per se; some set out to change their own worlds. And in so doing, they often change the way one person, or a few people, or whole communities, or entire nations or the world thinks and operates in some significant way.”

— Anita Roddick

“Part of my methodological approach is made explicit when I discuss ways in which literature can have philosophical significance. Literature doesn't typically argue - and when it does, it's deadly dull. But literature can supply the frame within which we come to observe and reason, or it can change our frame in highly significant ways. That's one of the achievements I'd claim for Mann, and for Death in Venice.”

— Philip Kitcher

“You can't change the past but you can change everything else. Take your first step toward making a significant change in your life, today.”

— Hal Elrod

“The most significant change wrought by adolescence is the taming of the ideals by which a person measures himself ... Love of oneself becomes love of the species. Conscience is pointed to the future, whispering permission to reach beyond the safety net of our ordinary and finite human existence.”

— Louise J. Kaplan

“[The New World Order] cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's perceptions.”

— Henry A. Kissinger

“Change your mind about something significant every day.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

“Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins.”

— Margaret J. Wheatley