50 of the Best Quotes about Change

Humans are evolutionarily predisposed to resist change and, the older we get the more change resistant we become..

Nevertheless, despite our instinctive resistance to change, we must learn to embrace new challenges. In today’s society the pace of development is immensely accelerating, and as Charles Darwin said once: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” This applies to life as well as to business.

We have collected 50 of the best quotes to motivate you to embrace change as a chance and not to see it as a hazard. Change is the only constant in life. The easiest way to cope with change is to love it!

The quotes are sorted chronologically by the author’s birth year. Enjoy and share!

Quote visualisation: Change your thoughts and you change your world – Norman Vincent Peale

Image: Elena Schälike

Your life is
what your thoughts make it.
Confucius

(551 – 479 BC, Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher)

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy,
not on fighting the old,
but on building the new.
Socrates

(c.470 – 399 BC, classical Greek (Athenian) philosopher)

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.
Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lao Tzu

(4th century BC, Chinese philosopher and writer)

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

(1207 – 1273, Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian)

Life is a progress, and not a station.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

(1803 – 1882, American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet)

It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin

(1809 – 1882, English naturalist, geologist and biologist)

Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau

(1817 – 1862, American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist,
naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
The point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]

(1818 – 1883, German philosopher, economist and political theorist)

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass

(1818 – 1895, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman)

Taking a new step, uttering a new word,
is what people fear most.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

(1821 – 1881, Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher)