Change and Transformation

The age of chivalry is gone.—That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

When earth breaks up and heaven expands,

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Habit is a great deadener.

Perhaps my best years are gone … but I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire that’s in me now.

Printing, gunpowder, and the mariner’s needle [compass] … these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

As the births of living creatures at first are ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:

To us he is no more a person

Natura il fece, e poi roppe la stampa. Nature made him, and then broke the mould.

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

It doesn’t matter about being born in a duckyard, as long as you’re hatched from a swan’s egg!

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the atomic age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.

You start out with one thing, end up with another, and nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future.

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn That he not busy being born Is busy dying.

But I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.

The order is Rapidly fadin’. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin’.