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Change Quotes

    “…we die to each other daily.

    What we know of other people

    Is only our memory of the moments

    During which we knew them. And they have changed since then.

    To pretend that they and we are the same

    Is a useful and convenient social convention

    which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember

    That at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”

    T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, via Sunbeams (Page 74)

      “Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.”

      William Irwin Thompson, via Sunbeams (Page 67)

        “Do you change people first or do you change society? I believe this is a false dichotomy. You have to change both simultaneously. If you’re changing only yourself and have no concern for changing the society, something goes awry. If you’re changing only society but not changing yourself, something goes awry, as tended to happen in the late 1960s. Now, ‘simultaneously’ may be an overstatement, because I think there are periods when one has to concentrate on one or the other. And there are periods in a society, in a culture, when the emphasis is appropriate only on one or the other. What I’m trying to say is, never lose sight of either the internal world or the external world, the peace within and the peace based on justice on the outside.”

        David Dellinger, via Sunbeams (Page 66)

          “We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even—or perhaps especially—in an emergency. This is so, I hasten to add, whether we are patients or psychoanalysts.”

          Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page 123)

            “Change and loss are deeply connected—there cannot be change without loss.”

            Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life (Page xii)

              “Nothing but uncertainty is certain. Circumstances come together, only to fall apart moments or months later. And then, in a flash, we must rise up and regain our footing. In the rearview mirror, I now see so clearly what escaped me then: It’s not that the ground underneath me was suddenly shifting; it’s that it is never still. That’s part of the work of my journey—getting comfortable with life’s groundlessness.”

              Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 66)

                “We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others’ ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots, but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible, even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that, after handing over our power piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.”

                Alicia Keys, More Myself (Page 56)

                  “You cannot bring the new in your life; the new comes. You can either accept it or reject it. If you reject it you remain a stone, closed and dead. If you receive it you become a flower, you start opening… and in that opening is celebration.”

                  Osho, Courage (Page 56)

                    “Heraclitus said, ‘No man steps in the same river twice.’ The second time around, both man and river are different than they were before. This is why I’m a fan of rereading books (and watching movies, walking on my old college campus, and so many of the things we do once and assume we’ve ‘got’). The books are the same, but we change between reads. The world changes, too.”

                    Ryan Holiday, Medium

                      “If something has worked for other greats before you, and if something is working for you, why change it up and embrace some new fad? Stick with what works, even if it’s unpopular.”

                      Kobe Bryant, Mamba Mentality (Page 25)