100 Best Quotes About Change and Growth

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Here are 100 of the best quotes about change. These change quotes will challenge you to think about about change differently and inspire you to accept, embrace, and seek change and growth.

1. “You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.” Marianne Williamson

2. “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” ― George Bernard Shaw

3. “Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.” — Henry Steele Commager

4. “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” ―Anais Nin

5. “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ― Rumi

6. “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘Don’t change anything.’” ― Henry Ford

7. “Change is as inexorable as time, yet nothing meets with more resistance.” — Benjamin Disraeli

8. “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” — Norman Vincent Peale

9. “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” — Leo Tolstoy

10. “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction can be the biggest step of your life.” — Naeem Callaway

11. “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.” — Steve Jobs

12. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl

13. “Keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.” — Roger W. Babson

14. “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.” — Francis Bacon

15. “Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.” — Carol Burnett

16. “The more you adapt, the more interesting you are.” — Martha Stewart

17. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

18. “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” — Jim Rohn

19. “They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” — Confucius

20. “We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean, a sea. Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.” ― C. JoyBell C.

21. “Everything will be alright does not mean everything will stay the same.” — Unknown

22. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” — Henry Ford

23. “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson

24. “If I am an advocate for anything, it is to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river.” — Anthony Bourdain

25. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean

26. “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.” — N. R. Narayana Murthy

27. “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” — William Shakespeare

28. “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

29. “Few can accept happiness if it means change. We want the life we have now, only happier.” — Robert Brault

30. “Stop being who you were and become who you are.” — Paulo Coelho

31. “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.” — Nathaniel Branden

32. “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” — Jim Rohn

33. “We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.” — John Steinbeck

34. “Think progress, not perfection.” — Ryan Holiday

35. “Life is changing all the time and if we fail to change with it we get left behind.” — Brian Colbert

36. “We are either progressing or retrograding all the while. There is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.” — James Freeman Clarke

37. “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ― Barack Obama

38. “Nothing happens unless something is moved.” — Albert Einstein

39. “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” — Winston Churchill

40. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” — Simone de Beauvoir

41. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela

42. “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” — Rosa Luxemburg

43. “Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat.” — Steve Jobs

44. “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” — Alan Cohen

45. “If you don’t look back on yourself and think, “Wow, how stupid I was a year ago,” then you must not have learned much in the last year.” — Ray Dalio

46. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi

47. “I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” — Aldous Huxley

48. “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” — Gail Sheehy

49. “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” — Confucius

50. “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” — Jim Collins

51. “The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.” — Robert Greene

52. “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” — Carol S. Dweck

53. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” — Tony Robbins

54. “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.” — Charles Kettering

55. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” — Robin Williams

56. “Old ways won’t open new doors.” — Unknown

57. “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” — Abraham Maslow

58. “Entrepreneurship is about creating change, not just companies.” — Mark Zuckerberg

59. “If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.” — Geena Davis

60. “Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” — Hugh Prather

61. “Change is the end result of all true learning.” — Leo Buscaglia

62. “It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.” — Mignon McLaughlin

63. “Do not be afraid of change or chaos. Embrace it by being as fluid as possible.” — Robert Greene

64. “There is nothing permanent except change.” — Heraclitus

65. “Becoming is better than being.” — Carol S. Dweck

66. “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” — Charles Kettering

67. “The 3 C’s in life: Choice, Chance, Change. You must make the Choice, to take the Chance, if you want anything in life to Change.” — Unknown

68. “Change may be alarming, but it is also refreshing – even exhilarating.” — Robert Greene

69. “What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.” — Mignon McLaughlin

70. “The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices.” — Margaret Mead

71. “If we want to change the world, we change ourselves.” — Jack Ma

72. “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

73. “You cannot change anyone, but you can be the reason someone changes.” — Roy T. Bennett

74. “The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.” — Mortimer Adler

75. “Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow.” — Glen Beaman

76. “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson

77. “Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.” — Tom Clancy

78. “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.” — John C. Maxwell

79. “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” — Harold Wilson

80. Definition Of Hell: “On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.” — Unknown

81. “In a time of rapid change, standing still is the most dangerous course of action.” — Brian Tracy

82. “Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot of patience.” — Robert Greene

Recommended Reading: 35 Proven Ways to Make Change Easier

83. “A scholar who loves comfort is not fit to be called a scholar.” — Confucius

84. “Just for the record darling, not all positive change feels positive in the beginning.” — S.C. Lourie

85. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” — Anne Frank

86. “Don’t be afraid to change. You may lose something good, but you may gain something even better.” — Unknown

87. “Growth is the only evidence of life.” — John Henry Newman

88. “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.” — William Pollard

89. “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ― Andy Warhol

90. “Maturity is when you stop complaining and making excuses, and start making changes.” — Roy T. Bennett

91. “If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.” — Norman Vincent Peale

92. “Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice.” — William Jennings

93. “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” — Carl Gustav Jung

94. “Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.” — Unknown

95. “To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.” — Sam Walton

96. “There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.” — Aldous Huxley

97. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” — Stephen Hawking

98. “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” — Epictetus

99. “If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.” — Larry Page

100. “The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” ― C. JoyBell C.