page 1 of 2
How could I hope to change the world if I didn’t start with myself? If I had to change at least one man, let it be me.
Video game: Cryostasis: The Sleep of Reason
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
Look, everybody else in America has already been to Prague, what’s the big deal if you send one extra? I’m sorry, you see I’ve been needing to go there for a long time, now. I mean there’s Czech and Slovakia, and the big Jewish cemetery, and the opera house… maybe that’s Vienna where the opera house is, but that’s nearby, and given the opportunity, I’d hit Vienna, too. Hell, I’d do all of Europe, given the chance. I can imagine Jane and some Praguean idiot dancing the night away… horrible image. And the coffee, see, all I know is American coffee, and the beer, and whatever is good over there. It’s gotta all be better over there. Nothing I eat has any taste. It’s been such a strange time. And what if I was there now, how would things be different? Isn’t there a big bridge with statues on it? I seem to remember that from a history class. And Jane and some guy kissing on the bridge in public. No, it’s Jane and some Czech writer. Image kills me… Just great. This is so frustrating. I’m terrible at conflict. I hate it. And if I’d imagined this problem while falling asleep one night I don’t think I would have spoken up to you. Even in my fantasy life, I just would’ve accepted it. That’s who I am. But today, I have to go. I have to. And when I tell people about this in the future, I know that, you know, it’ll be the time that I went. And I know when I review this whole episode in my head I’m not gonna know what I did or why I did it. I think they’ve done something with the real Grover. But it’ll make a good story of my young adult life. You know, the time I chose to go to Prague. I’ll look back on it and I won’t believe that I actually went, you know. I went away. So let me go. I have to, I need - just put me on the plane. Let me go.
Movie: Kicking and Screaming
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
As one goes through it, one sees that the gate one went through was the self that went through it…
I may not be where I want to be, But thank God I’m not where I used to be.
What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will one day be forgotten or will seem unimportant. And it’s curious that we can’t possibly tell what exactly will be considered great and important, and what will seem petty and ridiculous.
I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. I’m gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. There’s trees in the desert since you moved out, and I don’t sleep on a bed of bones.
TV: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
[I]f you’re sitting in my office for an interview, I am assuming you’ve got technical chops. We wouldn’t have let you in the door unless we could figure out from looking at your resume that you had the technical skills to do the job. Doesn’t matter if you’re a college hire or Mr. Lord of the Database. I’m not vetting you for technical ability, I’m vetting you for the breadth of your vision, I measuring your ambition, and I’m looking for a sign that you believe you can change the world.
In describing today’s accelerating changes, the media fires blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.
Society moves by some degree of parricide, by which the children, on the whole, kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs. This is what progress is.
Society is made up of groups, and as long as the smaller groups do not have the same rights and the same protection as others - I don’t care whether you call it capitalism or communism - it is not going to work. Somehow, the guys in power have to be reached by counterpower, or through a change in their hearts and minds, or change will not come.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.
Once upon a time…strong, independent women were called witches and were burned at the stake…Today they’re called feminists…they publish web pages, get flamed in e-mail and are blamed for most of society’s problems…It’s not perfect…but it’s a lot better than the stake.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
Successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it.
It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear… It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.
The best way to change the system is to wait until it changes.
TV: The Colbert Réport: 25 Oct 2005
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.
One never knows what will happen if things are suddenly changed. But do we know what will happen if they are not changed?
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
When one dreams alone, it is only a dream. When many dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.
Luck can only change with the perception of luck changing, because there is no luck, only evaluation of statistical probabilities.
“The Things That I Want” by Max Payne.
A smoke.
A whiskey.
For the sun to shine.
I want to sleep, to forget.
To change the past.
My wife and baby girl back.
Unlimited ammo and a license to kill.
Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.
A smoke.
A whiskey.
For the sun to shine.
I want to sleep, to forget.
To change the past.
My wife and baby girl back.
Unlimited ammo and a license to kill.
Right then, more than anything, I wanted her.
Video game: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
This is what I see when I look back. These moments, blinding as snow, they kill you, change you, you die and live again. Remade.
Video game: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
People are always telling you change is a good thing, but what they’re really saying is that something that you didn’t want to happen just happened.
Movie: You’ve Got Mail
Nature soon takes over if the gardener is absent.
One doesn’t change. As x changes, it stays the same. It says, “I don’t care what x does! It can run around me in circles! I’m one!”
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we do not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Our starting point is to put aside our apathy, complacency and cynicism and to choose hope, hope that leads to engagement. It is only in our hope and by our actions that the world will change
The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say “I don’t know”—then it becomes possible to get at the truth.
Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.
Character is a quality that embodies many important traits, such as integrity, courage, perseverance, confidence and wisdom. Unlike your fingerprints that you are born with and can’t change, character is something that you create within yourself and must take responsibility for changing.
“…history is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?’ By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”
Book: “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown, p. 256
There is no reason to think a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens cannot change the world; indeed, that’s the only thing that ever has.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.
Anything truly revolutionary is created by a few who see what is true and are willing to live according to that truth; but to discover what is true demands freedom from tradition, which means freedom from all fears.
If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.
It often takes more courage to change one’s opinion than to stick to it.
I have faith that if you show people reality, they’ll take their lives more seriously, and that will slowly change the world.
Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
page 1 of 2