Wilhelm von Humboldt Quotes

Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.

History is full of changings of the guard—some for the better, some for the worse.

The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

We’ve already decided to change. The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?

The time for change is now.

I worry that even those who want to reform are not quite sure how to go about it. There is so much to be done.

If you want change, you have to offer change.

Change is debilitating when it is done to us. Change is exhilarating when it is done by us.

Every year humanity takes a step towards Communism. Maybe not you, but … your grandson will surely be a Communist.

In nature and state, it is safer to change many things than one.

Liberalism is but childishness, which is easily brought to reason; but revolution is a force, and one must know how to use it.

Things don’t always get better. Sometimes they get worse. The only way things will get better if people make them better.

Reform is a monstrous way of dealing with problems.

Too often reform involves the mechanics of change rather than the underlying values.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Change is incremental and real change, enduring change, occurs one step at a time.

Sometimes, when a tide starts to sweep, it makes no difference what the traditions are.

We … need education in the obvious – to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.

The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Reform means difficulties. History moves often by leaps, then it moves slowly, because the resistance is organizing itself.

If we want everything to remain as it is, it will be necessary for everything to change.

… evolution over revolution.

One who uses an ancient rule to govern the present does not necessarily see the changes that have taken place.

Reform is a verb …. The process of Reform is an ongoing, dynamic one, not a static process that has reformed and is finished becoming.

One of the reasons that change takes place is that the people who produce it believe change can take place.