Quotes About Change

Change

Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.

— John Sloan

Progress is a nice word.  But change is its motivator and change is its enemies.

— Robert F. Kennedy

The only completely consistent people are dead.

— Aldous Huxley

There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conversation.

— Henry Glasgow

Each generation criticizes the unconscious assumptions made by its parents.  It may assent to them, but it brings them out into the open.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Love is more afraid of change than of destruction.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It behooves us to adapt oneself to the times if one wants to enjoy continued good fortune.

— Niccol˜ Machiavelli

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one.

— Karl Marx

Wise and prudent men — intelligent conservatives — have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Weep not that the world changes — did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.

— William Cullen Bryant

Change is constant in a progressive country.

— Benjamin Disraeli

Change is not progress.

— H. L. Mencken

Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.

— Alvin Toffler

Nothing endures but change.

— Heraclitus

Change has considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse.  To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better.  To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.  Obviously, then, one’s character and frame of mind determine how readily he brings about change and how he reacts to change that is imposed on him.

— King Whitney, Jr.

The oldest habit in the world for resisting change is to complain that unless the remedy to the disease should be universally applied it should not be applied at all.  But you must start somewhere.

— Winston Churchill

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

— Elbert Hubbard

The human tendency prefers familiar horrors to unknown delights.

— Fred Woodworth

You must change in order to survive.

— Pearl Bailey

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Quotes About Birth Control and Abortion

Parents may feel the need to have many babies to be sure that a few survive.

— World Bank, on high infant mortality rate in developing countries

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights — older than our political parties, older than our school system.

— William O. Douglas, on a woman’s right to a legal abortion

No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.

— Margaret Sanger

You must strive to multiply bread so that it suffices for the tables of mankind, and not rather favor an artificial control of birth, which would be irrational, in order to diminish the number of guests at the banquet of life.

— Pope Paul VI

Do you think someone who is about to rape you is going to stop and think about a condom?

— Eli Adorno

The best contraception is the word no— repeated frequently.

— Margaret Chase Smith

The Catholic wife is under great pressure...If she uses contraceptives, she is called wicked by her parish priest.  If she follows the advice of her parish priest and refrains from sexual intercourse, she is called cold by her husband.  If she doesn’t take steps, she is called mad by society at large.

— Anne Biezanek

The routine promotion of condoms through advertising has been stopped by networks who are so hypocritically priggish that they refuse to describe disease control as they promote disease transmission.

— Henry A. Waxman

There is no non-arbitrary lines separating a fetus from a child or, indeed, an adult from a human being.

— Byron R. White

I’ve noticed that everyone that is for abortion has already been born.

— Ronald Reagan

The states are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies...Abortion raises moral and spiritual questions over which honorable persons can disagree sincerely and profoundly.  But those disagreements did not then and do not now relieve us of our duty to apply the Constitution faithfully.

— Harry A. Blackman

A father’s interest in having a child— perhaps his only child— may be unmatched by any other interest in his life.  It is truly surprising that the state must assign a greater value to a mother’s decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father’s decision to let it mature into a live child.

— William H. Rehnquist

I realize that the subject of abortion is deeply divisive, with reaction felt more in the emotions than in the mind.  For this reason, dispassionate factual discussions are more beneficial than the tossing about of violent slogans.  I also realize that legalized abortion is far from the ideal solution to unwanted conception.  Yet a lifetime of work in the field has convinced me that liberalized abortion is an absolutely essential tool to ease the lot of many women and families in a tough, tough world.

— Alan Guttmacher

There is an old Puerto Rican saying] that men must do three things during life: plant trees, write books, and have sons.  I wish they would plant more trees and write more books.

— Luis Mu–oz Marin

Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was the fifth.

— Clarence S. Darrow

A society which practices death control must at the same time practice birth control.

— John Rock

One of the biggest things people could do for their descendants would be so sharply limit the number of them.

— Olin Miller

Safe and effective contraception is essential in man’s battle to control his environment.

— Elizabeth Connell

Once you pass into the utilitarianism of abortion, where do you go?  Why do you kill an unborn child after six months and not old people or not criminals or not just every second person in the world?

— Victor Heylen

If my parents had been exposed to today’s ideas of family planning, my brothers Win and David might not have made it.

— John D. Rockefeller III

Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can’t.  But I don’t believe that the federal government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.

— Jimmy Carter, on the availability of abortions

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.

— Gloria Steinem (attrib.)

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Quotes About Belief

Beware of the community in which blasphemy does not exist: underneath, atheism runs rampant.

— Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience.  I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

— Madeleine L’Engle

Man is what he believes.

— Anton Chekhov

We have to believe in free will.  We’ve got no choice.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

— Samuel Johnson

Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

— Tallulah Bankhead

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.

— Robert Bolton

Whether you are really right or not doesn’t matter; it’s the belief that counts.

— Robertson Davies

If God be for us, who can be against us?

— Romans 8:31

I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God.

— Job 19:25-26

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

— Oscar Wilde

Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

— Genesis 28:16

I would not say I believe.  I know!  I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

— Carl Jung

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

They conquer who believe they can.

— John Dryden

I am proud of the revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought...the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but the hands of God.

— John F. Kennedy

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

— George Bernard Shaw

The only completely consistent people are the dead.

— Aldous Huxley

Mix a conviction with a man and something happens.

— Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Any man’s a crowd who won’t die for what he believes.

— Chester Bomar Himes

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Quotes About Attitude

If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right.

— Mary Kay Ash

Nothing is so commonplace as to wish to be remarkable.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate— that’s my philosophy.

— Thornton Wilder

Humans can learn to like anything, that’s why we are such a successful species.

— Jeannette Desor

The enemy is in front of us, behind us, to the left of us, and to the right of us.  They can’t escape us this time!

— Marine Lieutenant Lewis B (Chesty) Puller

Funny is an attitude.

— Flip Wilson

Character is the result of two things — mental attitude and the way we spend out time.

— Elbert Hubbard

A much more effective and lasting method of face-lifting than surgical technique is happy thinking, new interests, and outdoor exercise.

— Dr. Sara Murray Jordan

Because I remember, I despair.  Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

— Elie Wiesel

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

— Margaret Thatcher

The Wright brothers flew through the smoke screen of impossibility.

— Charles F. Kettering

He that despises small things shall fall by little and little.

— Ecclesiasticus 19:1

He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.

— Proverbs 15:15

Be cheerful while you are alive.

— Ptahhotep (c. 2350 B.C.)

A bad attitude is the worst thing that can happen to a group of people.  It’s infectious.

— Roger Allan Raby

Today’s students] can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains...If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it.  They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.

— Jesse Jackson

Change has considerable psychological impact on the human mind.  To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse.  To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better.  To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.  Obviously, then, one’s character and frame of mind determine how readily he brings about change and how he reacts to change that is imposed on him.

— King Whitney, Jr.

A man’s happiness or unhappiness depends as much on his temperament as on his destiny.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He who has confidence in himself will lead the rest.

— Horace

Until you know that life is interesting— and find it so— you haven’t found you soul.

— Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher

If you think you’re a second-class citizen, you are.

— Ted Turner

Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.

— Alphonse Karr

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

— Anthony Trollope

A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.

— Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Of course there is no formula for success except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.

— Arthur Rubinstein

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

— Robert Browning

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them, but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.

— Leo Burnett

Not a shred of evidence occurs in favor of the idea that life is serious.

— Brendan Gill

I’m not happy, I’m cheerful.  There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all.  A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.

— Beverly Sills

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Sometimes you just gotta say “what the f***.”

— The movie Risky Business

One’s existence should be in two parts: one should live like a bourgeois and think like a demigod.

— Gustave Flaubert

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Quotes About Courage

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

— C. S. Lewis

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.

— Mark Twain

The man who knows when not to act is wise.  To my mind, bravery is forethought.

— Euripides

To bear other people’s afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare.

— Benjamin Franklin

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

— Dolores Ibarruri

A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.

— Marvin Kitman

Courage is grace under pressure.

— Ernest Hemingway

If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?

— Marvin Kitman

Have the courage to act instead of react.

— Earlene Larson Jenks

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards.

— Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

— Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead.

— William Shakespeare

Fear always springs from ignorance.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The last thing a woman will consent to discover in a man whom she loves, or on whom she simply depends, is want of courage.

— Joseph Conrad

True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before all the world.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

— Jonathon Swift

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.

— Thomas Fuller

Heroes may not be braver than anyone else.  They’re just braver five minutes longer.

— Ronald Reagan

Courage is very important.  Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.

— Ruth Gordon

It is a brave act of valor to condemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.

— Thomas Browne

No one can prove his courage when he has never been in danger.

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld

But screw your courage to the sticking place, and you’ll not fail.

— William Shakespeare

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight--it is the size of the fight in the dog.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

A man of courage never needs weapons, but he may need bail.

— Ethel Watts Mumford

What cannot be cured must be endured.

— Ignatius Sancho

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated.  You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.

— David Lloyd George

I have not yet begun to fight. (Sometimes quoted as “I have just begun to fight.”)

— Captain John Paul Jones, aboard the Bonhomme Richard, when asked whether he was prepared to surrender to the British, September 13, 1779

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you...you’ll be a Man, my son!

— Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.

— Jean Kerr

The first and great commandment is, Don’t let them scare you.

— Elmer Davis

If blood be shed, let it be our blood.  Cultivate the quiet courage of dying without killing.  For man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

— Mohandas K. Gandhi

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