Be Inspired With These 35 Quotes About Change

One of the best actions a person can take to improve their wellbeing and live a happier life is to embrace change. Reading a little nugget of wisdom such as a short quote about change can sometimes be all we need to start a day. Change is also one of the things us humans fear the most. The status quo gives us a feeling of comfort, and that same warm feeling of comfort and safety and often stops us doing the things we really need to do in our lives. 

But I am the same as the next person, and like most people, sometimes there’s something valuable in getting a few reminders about who we should embrace change. Fortunately for us, we have an entire human history of philosophers, writers and leaders who have learned about the importance of change and have spoken about it. 

If you need inspiration today, read through these motivating and beautiful quotes about change, and aim to take at least one lesson away from them that you can apply to your life today.  

1. If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading – Lao Tzu 
2. You are who you are and what you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change who you are and what you are by changing what goes into your mind – Zig Ziglar
3. Change your opinions, keep your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots – Victor Hugo
4. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself – Leo Tolstoy
5. True change takes place in the imagination – Unknown
6. A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has – Margaret Mead. 
7. For changes to be of any true value, they’ve got to be lasting and consistent – Tony Robbins
8. Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are – Bryant. H. McGill
9. Change brings opportunity – Nido Qubein
10. To change what you get, you must change who you are – Vernon Howard
11. To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior – Maxwell Maltz
12. We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it – Carl T Rowan
13. Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change – Stephen Hawking
14. Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom…the power to choose, to respond, to change – Stephen Covey
15. You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight – Jim Rohn
16. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails – William Arthur Ward
17. Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes – Hugh Prather
18. When you blame others, you give up your power to change – Robert Anthony 
19. To create more positive results in your life, replace ‘if only’ with ‘next time’ – Unknown
20. When in doubt, choose change – Lily Leung
21. All great changes are preceded by chaos – Deepak Chopra
22. Dripping water hollows out a stone, not through force but through persistence – Ovid
23. Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t – Steve Maraboli
24. True life is lived when tiny changes occur – Leo Tolstoy
25. There has never been a meaningful life built on easy street – John Paul Warren
26. It’s never too late to be what you might have been – George Eliot
27. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new – Albert Einstein
28. There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self – Aldous Huxley
29. The most successful people are those who are good at plan B – James Yorke
30. Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong – Unknown
31. The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul – G. K. Chesterton
32. If you don’t look back at yourself and think, “wow, how stupid I was a year ago,” then you must not have learned much in the last year – Ray Dalio  
33. There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom – Anais Nin
34. Let your smile change the world but never let the world change your smile – Unknown
35. It is the hard days, the times that challenge you to your very core, that determine who you are – Sheryl Sandberg

Do you have a favorite quote that deserves to be added to this list? Tell me in the comments below!