23 Quotes on Changing the World and How To Start Making a Difference

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Excerpt: What you do makes a difference. Every action, every choice, every day. Read our quotes on changing the world and start making a difference.

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Introduction: Where Any Real Change Starts

What you do makes a difference. Every action, every choice, every day. Don’t get it twisted in thinking that you’re just a small fish in a large ocean and that it doesn’t matter what you do—the world will always be the same. False. Wrong. Lazy thinking. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, motivated individuals can change the world—as it is the only thing that ever has!

Real change has and always will start with an individual. An individual who dares dream of a different world, influences people to join him on the quest to get there, and takes action accordingly. Easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be grandiose and insurmountable. The journey simply has to start with the intention of changing just one person. As the Dalai Lama reminds us, “The suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity; The happiness of one person or nation is the happiness of humanity.”

We are one. Once we understand this truth—that every action we take isn’t affecting just one person but ultimately, all of humanity—then we may begin to live in a whole new light. Here’s the mastery mindset: Either you’re contributing to a greener world or you’re promoting a more polluted one;  Either you’re promoting education and learning or you’re promoting ignorance and forgetfulness; Either your relationships are getting better or they’re getting worse; Etc.

When it comes to your influence on the world, you’re either a part of the cure or a part of the disease. Imagine you are in a canoe rowing upstream. When you positively contribute, you paddle forward. When you negatively contribute, you paddle backward. When you don’t contribute at all, that’s the equivalent of not paddling at all, which will cause you to drift downstream. So, unless you are taking positive action in each of those areas, it’s important to remember that you may be consequently choosing inaction. And according to this logic, it follows that: doing nothing may be just as bad as doing wrong (varying only in degree/ intensity).  

So the goal then is to step up and take action towards making the world a more compassionate, loving place—because watching it go downhill may be causing just as much harm as the ones doing the harm. Hard to digest—I know. But I have had enough of the sitting back and watching—I want this to be a wake up call! The bystander and the bully may be at equal fault and may cause equal pain to the bullied. The person who doesn’t pick up the trash on the ground is equally at fault with the one who trashed it. The person who feels indifference towards another person may cause just as much pain as a person who feels hatred towards another person.

If we sit back and watch the world suffer and do nothing about it, then we are the ones contributing to the suffering. We need to act with love and compassion if we are to truly make a difference in the world—one person at a time. Take some time to digest our quotes on changing the world below and think more deeply about this idea of starting where you are with what you have. Remember, every decision you make is already rippling action into the world—whether you take action or not. Cheers to a better tomorrow!

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The List: 23 Quotes on Changing the World and How To Start Making a Difference:

“We are all capable of contributing to the world in a way that makes a profound difference.  A rare few go big.  Make the big gesture.  Take the big risk.  Expose themselves on a grand scale.  Create and then ride the big wave.  But most of us, myself included, take a different yet equally valid path.  It’s the path of the ripple.  Simple actions, moments, and experiences.  Created, offered, and delivered with such a purity of intention and depth of integrity and clarity that they set in motion a ripple that, quietly, in its own way, in its own time, expands outward.  Interacting with, touching, mattering to people we’ve never met in ways we never conceived.”

Jonathan Fields, How To Live A Good Life

“Like the elephant, we are unconscious of our own strength. When it comes to understanding the power we have to make a difference in our own lives, we might as well be asleep. If you want to make your dreams come true, wake up. Wake up to your own strength. Wake up to the role you play in your own destiny. Wake up to the power you have to choose what you think, do, and say.”

Keith Ellis

“If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”

Dalai Lama, via Life Hack

It’s Not.

“It is we who nourish the Soul of the World, and the world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse.”

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I can focus all my energy on trying to destroy the old world, or I can spend my energy on trying to create a better one.”

Sevan Apollo Poetry, Good Men Project

“We make a difference to other people when we give gifts to them, when we bring emotional labor to the table and do work that matters.  It’s hard for me to imagine that this way of living and working is available to only a few.  Yes, the cards are unfairly stacked against too many people.  Yes, there are too many barriers and not enough support.  But no, your ability to create and contribute isn’t determined at birth.  It’s a choice.”

Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?

Walk your talk.

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

John F. Kennedy

“The television reports gave me my first inkling of a world beyond my own, a world that wasn’t fair or equal, a world of poverty, war, disease and famine. But I also realized that this state of affairs wasn’t necessarily a given, and that we have it in our power to make a difference, to make the world a better place for all. We have that choice. One thing’s for sure, though – if we do nothing, it will be a given.”

Chrissie Wellington, A Life Without Limits

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Helen Keller

“If you wait until you can do everything for everybody, instead of something for somebody, you’ll end up not doing anything for anybody.”

Malcom Bane

“If you want to make a positive impact, no matter how far-reaching, start at home. Treat your family members like treasures.”

John C. Maxwell, Today Matters

“You save the world one man at a time; anything else is grandiose romanticism or politics.”

Charles Bukowski

It doesn’t matter what everybody else is doing.

“We cannot do great things on this earth. We can only do small things with great love.”

Mother Teresa

“I believe that you and I – and everyone we’ll ever meet – has the inborn capacity to be heroic, to take daring, courageous, and noble steps to make life better for others, even when in the short term it seems to be at our own expense. The capacity to do the right thing, to dare to take a stand and make a difference, is within you now.”

Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

“Each of us feels some aspect of the world’s suffering acutely. And we must pay attention. We must act. This little corner of the world is ours to transform. This little corner of the world is ours to save.”

Stephen Cope, The Great Work of Your Life

Stop complaining. Start solving.

“Yes, there are problems, I agree. There are great problems.  Life is such a hell.  Misery is there, poverty is there, violence is there, all kinds of madnesses are afloat, that’s true—but still, I insist the problem arises in the individual soul.  The problem is there because individuals are in chaos.  The total chaos is nothing but a combined phenomenon: we have all poured our chaos into it.  The world is nothing but a relationship; we are related with each other.  If I am neurotic and you are neurotic, then the relationship will be even more neurotic—it is multiplied, not just doubled.  And everybody is neurotic; hence, the world is neurotic.  The beginning has to be with you: You are the ‘world problem.’  So don’t avoid the reality of your inner world—that is the first thing.”

Osho, Fame, Fortune, and Ambition

“‘Let us pick up our books and our pens,‘ I said. ‘They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.’”

Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala

“The most important step of all is the first step.  Start something!  What if that idea you have in the back of your head is a really good one, one that might end up helping tens of thousands of people?  You owe it to the world to act.  Or maybe it will help only a few people:  The same advice applies.  If you don’t do it, you are missing out on something big, and so are the people who could have been helped.”

Blake Mycoskie (Founder of TOMS)

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

Anne Frank

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