Change Quotes
More change than a first grader's piggy bank.
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Love it or hate it, change is a huge part of life. Click on any change quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."Source: East of Eden | Author: John Steinbeck
"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."Source: The Book of Isaiah | Author: The Prophet Isaiah
"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."Source: Gone with the Wind | Author: Margaret Mitchell
"Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."Source: Inauguration Address, January 20, 1961 | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"Source: The Book of Jeremiah | Speaker: The Prophet Jeremiah
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."Source: February 5, 2008 Speech | Speaker: Barack Obama
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Source: "Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957 | Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid."Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey | Speaker: HAL 9000
"Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony."Source: Ebony and Ivory | Speaker: Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
"For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."Source: The Plague | Author: Albert Camus
"He ain't no drag—Papa's got a brand new bag."Source: Papa's Got a Brand New Bag | Speaker: James Brown
"Hey, where did we go? Days when the rains came..."Source: "Brown-Eyed Girl" | Speaker: Van Morrison
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."Source: Misquoted | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."Source: The Diary of Anne Frank | Author: Anne Frank
"I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland | Author: Lewis Carroll
"I don't like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself."Source: Heart of Darkness | Author: Joseph Conrad
"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."Source: The Wizard of Oz | Speaker: Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland)
"I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control."Source: Emma (1996 adaptation) | Speaker: Emma Woodhouse
"I've got all my life to live and I've got all my love to give"Source: I Will Survive | Speaker: Gloria Gaynor
"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."Source: Wuthering Heights | Author: Emily Brontë
"If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?"Source: "Free Bird" | Speaker: Lynyrd Skynyrd
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins"Source: 1 John 1:9 | Author: The Elder
"If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change."Source: "Man in the Mirror" | Speaker: Michael Jackson
"In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous."Source: Night | Author: Elie Wiesel
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."Source: 1789 Letter | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"Source: A Clockwork Orange | Author: Anthony Burgess
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."Source: The Origin of the Species | Speaker: Charles Darwin
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."Source: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Author: J.K. Rowling
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you […] persuading you, almost, to deny the evidence of your senses."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."Source: A Tale of Two Cities | Author: Charles Dickens
"It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring."Source: Matthew 16:2-3 | Author: Matthew
"I’d rather be a hammer than a nail"Source: "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" | Speaker: Simon and Garfunkel
"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper."Source: Essay Concerning Human Understanding | Author: John Locke
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities."Source: Bare Necessities | Speaker: Baloo
"Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind."Source: Address to the UN General Assembly (1961) | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Maybe Christmas, perhaps...means a little bit more!"Source: How the Grinch Stole Christmas | Author: Dr. Seuss
"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Speaker: Reverend Sykes
"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."Source: Mrs Dalloway | Author: Virginia Woolf
"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."Source: The Negro Speaks of Rivers | Author: Langston Hughes
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."Source: Speech to the House of Commons, August 20, 1940 | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"No man is good enough to govern any woman without her consent."Source: The annual convention of the California State Suffrage Association | Speaker: Susan B. Anthony
"Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"Our long national nightmare is over."Source: Inaugural Address, September 9, 1974 | Speaker: President Gerald Ford
"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant"Source: Tell all the truth but tell it slant— | Author: Emily Dickinson
"That the sun will not rise tomorrow implies no more contradiction than that it will rise."Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | Author: David Hume
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."Source: First Moon Landing | Speaker: Neil Armstrong
"The Christian religion cannot be believed by any reasonable person."Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | Author: David Hume
"The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness"Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."Source: On the Road | Author: Jack Kerouac
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed."Source: "In My Life" | Speaker: The Beatles
"There's something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn't be fair if they tried."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."Source: The Second Coming | Author: William Butler Yeats
"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."Source: The Hollow Men | Author: T.S. Eliot
"Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."Source: The Pride of the Yankees | Speaker: Lou Gehrig
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."Source: The Road Not Taken | Author: Robert Frost
"Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink."Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us."Source: Malcolm X | Speaker: Malcolm X (played by Denzel Washington)
"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year."Source: "Wish You Were Here" | Speaker: Pink Floyd
"We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"What a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person."Source: Paper Towns | Author: John Green
"Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."Source: My Ántonia | Author: Willa Cather
"Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there."Source: The Grapes of Wrath | Speaker: Tom Joad
"You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?"Source: The Glass Menagerie | Author: Tennessee Williams
"You're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so...get on your way!"Source: Oh, the Places You'll Go! | Author: Dr. Seuss
"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald