Change and Change Management Quotes
Top 50 Change and Change Management Quotes
No 1 (Best
quote!)![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-paine.jpg)
We have it in our power to begin the world over
again.
- Thomas (Tom)
Paine (1737-1809), English philosopher, pictured
right.
No 2![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-watson-jr.jpg)
In business, the status quo means inevitable failure.
- Thomas Watson Jnr (pictured
right) in A Business and Its
Beliefs (1963)
So he also said in the same book:
Complacency is the most natural and insidious disease of large corporations.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-johnson-spencer.jpg)
So Spencer Johnson (pictured right) in Who Moved My
Cheese? (1998) observes:
A change imposed is a change opposed.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-rowling.jpg)
Dumbledore in J.K.
Rowling's (pictured right) Goblet of Fire also says:
Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.
No 3![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-harvey-jones.jpg)
Change is an attitude of mind and the place to start is within ourselves.
- John Harvey-Jones, pictured right, Managing To
Survive (1993).
This is reflected in advice from other thinkers:
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-gandhi.jpg)
We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma (Mohandas)
Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian leader and philosopher, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-thoreau.jpg)
Things do not change; we change.
- Henry David
Thoreau (1817-62), American philosopher, pictured right.
No 4![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-franklin.jpg)
When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.
- Benjamin
Franklin (1706-90), pictured right, American politician and inventor
Other great thinkers agree:
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-beauvoir.jpg)
Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future.
- Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986),
French philosopher, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-einstein.jpg)
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep good balance you must keep moving.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955),
German-born American scientist, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-wittgenstein.jpg)
Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in
your sleep
- Ludwig
Wittgenstein (1889-1951), the Austrian-born British philosopher (pictured right)
No 5![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-welch.jpg)
Change or die.
- Jack Welch (1935-),
American boss of General Electric (GE) 1981-2001 (pictured right)
Welch also says:
Change before you have to
No 6![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-drucker.jpg)
Every organization has to prepare for the abandonment of everything it does.
- Peter Drucker (1909-2005), American management writer,
pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-peters-tom.jpg)
No 7
Loving change, tumult, even chaos is a prerequisite for survival, let alone success.
- Tom Peters (pictured right above ) in Thriving On
Chaos (1987)![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-mintzberg.jpg)
But Henry Mintzberg (pictured right) in his 1987 Harvard
Business Review article, Crafting Strategy says:
Obsession with change is dysfunctional.
No 8![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-adams-john.jpg)
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.
- John Adams (1735-1826) , American president,
pictured right.
Two other great people agree:
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-guevera.jpg)
The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
- Ernesto (‘Che’) Guevara (1928–67), pictured right, the Argentinian revolutionary.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-mill.jpg)
All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions.
- John Stuart
Mill (1806-73), English philosopher, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quoteskaf.jpg)
But the Czech writer, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), pictured right, warns:
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind the slime of a new bureaucracy.
No 9![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-johnson.jpg)
Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
- Samuel Johnson 1709–84 English writer, pictured right.
So two other writers say:
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-douglass.jpg)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
- Frederick
Douglass (1818-1895), African American abolitionist, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-adams-scott.jpg)
People hate change.
- Scott Adams (pictured right) in The Dilbert Principle,1996
No 10
When people feel the wind, some build windmills and some build walls.
- Chinese proverb.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-newton-isaac.jpg)
Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the
English scientist, pictured right. says something similar:
We build too many walls and not enough bridges
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-paul-all-quiet.jpg)
No 11
Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days,
- Paul Bäumer (pictured right in the 1930 film) in All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich
Remarque (1929).
No 12![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-heraclitus.jpg)
There is nothing permanent except change.
- Heraclitus (c540-c480BC), Greek
philosopher, pictured right.
He also gives two tips on change:
Where there is no strife there is decay.
You cannot step twice into the same river.
No 13![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-dyke.jpg)
If you want organizations to change, you have
to carry the staff with you.
- Greg Dyke (speaking in 2000 as the BBC’s Director General), pictured
right.
No 14![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-frost.jpg)
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
(from the poem, The Black Cottage, 1914)
- Robert Frost, American poet , pictured right above.
No 15![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-yeats.jpg)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
(from the poem The Second Coming)
- W. B. Yeats 1865–1939 Irish poet, pictured right.
No 16![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-gladwell.jpg)
The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and
spreads like wildfire.
- Malcolm Gladwell (pictured right) in The Tipping
Point (2000)
No 17![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-kanter.jpg)
The change master is partly a historian who knows which period of the past to honour and preserve while moving
toward a different future.
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter (pictured right) in
The Change Masters (1984)
No 18![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-kotter.jpg)
By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without
establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees.
- John Kotter, pictured right, in Leading Change (1996)
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-roosevelt-fd.jpg)
No 19
Men are not prisoners of fate but only prisoners of their own minds,
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945),
American president, pictured right.
Why is this?![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-gardner-howard.jpg)
Minds...are hard to change,
- Howard Gardner, pictured right, in Changing Minds (2006)
No 20![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-galbraith.jpg)
Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability...I
shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.
- John Kenneth (J. K.) Galbraith, pictured right,The Affluent Society (1958)
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-hamel.jpg)
So Gary Hamel, pictured right. says in Leading
the Revolution (2000):
Familiarity is the enemy.
No 21![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-russell.jpg)
Change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
- Bertrand
Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher (pictured right).
On progress Russell comments:
The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress.
No 22![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-james.jpg)
If things are to move upward, someone must take the first step and assume the risk
of it.
- William
James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher, pictured right.
No 23![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-dickens.jpg)
Change begets change.
(from Martin Chuzzlewit)
- Charles Dickens
(1812-70), pictured right. English novelist.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-sloan.jpg)
Alfred
Sloan (1875-1966), American boss of General Motors (1923-46), pictured right,
agrees:
No company ever stops changing. Change will
come for better or worse,
No 24![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-fitzgerald.jpg)
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,
(last words of The Great
Gatsby)
- Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American writer, pictured right.
No 25![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-dylan.jpg)
He not busy being born is busy dying.
- Bob Dylan, pictured right. - from his song, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding), a favourite
of Steve Jobs, Apple's legendary boss.
No 26![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-emerson.jpg)
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest achievement.
- Ralph Waldo
Emerson (1803-1882), American writer and philosopher, pictured right.
No 27![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-rowling.jpg)
We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the
power to imagine better.
- J.K. Rowling (1965- ), English
writer, pictured right.
No 28![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-roosevelt-fd.jpg)
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945),
American president 1933-45, pictured right..
No 29![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-jung.jpg)
We cannot change anything unless we accept it.
- Carl Jung (1875-1961), Swiss
psychiatrist, pictured right.
No 30![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-disraeli.jpg)
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), pictured
right, English prime minister.
No 31![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotesjohnpchan31.jpg)
Have no fear of moving into the unknown,
- John Paul II (1920-2005), pictured right,
Polish pope.
No 32![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-kennedy-jf.jpg)
Change is the law of life.
- John F Kennedy (1917-63), pictured right,
American president.
Kennedy also
comments:
The time to mend the
roof is when the sun is shining.
In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity.
No 33![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-reagan.jpg)
Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’.
- Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) , American
president, pictured right.
No 34![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-rogers-carl.jpg)
When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
- Carl
Rogers (1902-87), the American psychologist (pictured right).
No 35![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-lincoln.jpg)
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present and
future.
- Abraham Lincoln
(1809-65), pictured right, American president.
No 36![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-obama.jpg)
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are
the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
- Barack Obama (1961-
), pictured right, American president.
No 37![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-ford.jpg)
Progress is attitude.
- Henry Ford (1863-1947),
American car maker, pictured right.
No 38![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-watson-snr.jpg)
Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.
- Tom Watson Sr. (1874-1956),
American founder of IBM, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-watson-jr.jpg)
His son,Tom Jr., pictured right.
agrees:
Every time we’ve moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the
block and try something new.
No 39![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-montaigne.jpg)
The only thing certain is nothing is certain.
- Michel de
Montaigne (1533-92), French writer and philosopher, pictured right.
No 40![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-kierkegaard.jpg)
Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.
- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55),
Danish philosopher, pictured right.
No 41![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-machiavelli.jpg)
The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers.
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527),
Italian philosopher, pictured right.
No 42![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-cleaver.jpg)
What we're saying today is that you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.
- Eldridge Cleaver (1935–98) American political activist, pictured right.
No 43![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-frank.jpg)
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world.
- Anne Frank (1929-1945), Jewish victim of
the Holocaust, pictured right.
No 44![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-keynes.jpg)
If the barometer is high and the clouds are black, don’t waste time on a debate on whether to take an
umbrella.
- John Maynard
Keynes (1883-1946), English economist, pictured right.
No 45![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-simpson-homer.jpg)
I guess some people never change. Or, they quickly change and then quickly change back.
- Homer Simpson, American cartoon
character, pictured right.
No 46![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-picasso.jpg)
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It
leads to sterility.
-Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish
artist, pictured right.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-shakespeare.jpg)
No 47
The wheel is come full circle.
(Edmund in King Lear)
- William
Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right above.
![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-collins.jpg)
No 48![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-porras.jpg)
Contrary to popular wisdom, the proper first response to a changing world is not to ask, “How should we change?”
but rather to ask, “What do we stand for and why do we exist?
- Jim Collins, pictured right above. and Jerry
Porras, pictured right., Built to
Last (1994)
No 49![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-levitt.jpg)
Nothing drives progress like the imagination.
- Theodore (Ted) Levitt, pictured right,
in.The Marketing
Imagination (1983)
No 50![Change and Change Management Quotes Change and Change Management Quotes](images/quotes-toffler.jpg)
Change is the process by which the future invades our lives,
- Alvin Toffler, pictured right, in Future Shock (1970)
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