Quotes About Change & Life Transitions
Photo credit: Onur Kurtic
Throughout life there will always be points of transition, both major and minor. When you need some inspiring words to help ground you and provide perspective during a transition, quotes from authors, philosophers, and other inspiring voices can be helpful.
Whether you are moving out of the country for a new job, starting a business, leaving home for college, or dealing with a recent personal loss, feel relief in knowing that millions before you have pushed through similar challenges. Likewise, if you are thinking about embarking on a new path or changing the direction of an important area of your life, these quotes will also provide inspiration.
Change is a part of the human experience that we all must face, and in some cases, we may need a little motivation to make a much needed change. No matter the case or circumstance, it helps us build our emotional fortitude and resilience against fear, serving as a catalyst to growth. Here are quotes about managing change and life transitions, which will help you as you encounter new turning points in life.
Quotes About Change & Life Transitions
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
– John D. Rockefeller
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.”
– Chinese Proverb
“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”
– Stephen Chbosky
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic.”
– Peter Drucker
“If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.”
– Amy Tan
“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.”
– Abraham Maslow
“We cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are.”
– Max De Pree
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
– Harriet Tubman
“If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.”
– Philip Crosby
“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
– Maria Robinson
“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
– John Maxwell
“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“You’re always one decision away from a totally different life.”
– Anonymous
“A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one.”
– Desmond Ford
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli
“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
– Niccolò Machiavelli
“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by discomforts.”
– Arnold Bennett
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
– Victor Hugo
“If an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except beliefs … The only sacred cow in an organization should be its basic philosophy of doing business.”
– Thomas Watson Jr.
“Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
– John F. Kennedy
“You must welcome change as the rule, but not as your ruler.”
– Denis Waitley
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
– Lao Tzu
“There are far better things ahead than any we leave behind.”
– C.S. Lewis
“Light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning.”
– Theresa Tsalaky
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
“All things are difficult before they are easy.”
– Thomas Fuller
“True life is lived when tiny changes occur.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“Change is inevitable in life. You can either resist it and potentially get run over by it, or you can choose to cooperate with it, adapt to it, and learn how to benefit from it. When you embrace change you will begin to see it as an opportunity for growth.”
– Jack Canfield
“Dreams are the seeds of change. Nothing ever grows without a seed, and nothing ever changes without a dream.”
– Debby Boone
“Holding onto something that is good for you now, may be the very reason why you don’t have something better.”
– C. JoyBell C.
“You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy.”
– C. JoyBell C.
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”
– Steve Maraboli
“If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.”
– William Samuel Johnson
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
– Winston Churchill
“Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
– Mandy Hale
“Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
– Henri Bergson
“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”
– Maya Angelou
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
– Wayne W. Dyer
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Hermann Hesse
“Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up.”
– James Belasco and Ralph Stayer
“Growth and comfort do not coexist.”
– Ginni Rometty
“We are all prisoners of our past. It is hard to think of things except in the way we have always thought of them. But that solves no problems and seldom changes anything.”
– Charles Handy
“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.”
– Raymond Lindquist
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
– William Arthur Ward
“When shifts and transitions in life shake you to the core, see that as a sign of greatness that’s about to occur.”
– Anonymous
“The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.”
– John P. Kotter
“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Roy T. Bennett
“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.”
– Gail Sheehy
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
– Nelson Mandela
“Change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation or self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work, because it doesn’t take.”
– William Bridges
“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”
– Barbara Kingsolver
“Good things take time.”
– John Wooden
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
– Frederick Douglass
“If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”
– Kurt Lewin
“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
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
– Alfred North Whitehead
”Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.”
– Peter Senge
“A change of heart is the essence of all other change and it is brought about by a re-education of the mind.”
– Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
– Charles Darwin
“You can’t move so fast that you try to change the mores faster than people can accept it. That doesn’t mean you do nothing, but it means that you do the things that need to be done according to priority.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
– Charles Kettering
“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.”
– Hugh Prather
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
– Rumi
“Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.”
– Philip Crosby
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
– Andy Warhol
“We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.”
– Harrison Ford
“Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.”
– Bertrand Russell
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”
– Robert Frost
