Change and Adaptation Quotes

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

To remember my values, I need to lose certain tastes and find other handles for the memories that they once helped me carry.

My own career reflects a strange dichotomy between the world we've long known and the world that will become.

You try things on in life. You wear them for a while, and you see what's next.

A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

I'm gonna reveal something to you that's going to come as a shock: If you're a stupid young man, you're usually a stupid old man. Most people, including myself, keep repeating the same mistakes.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of circumstances in which men find themselves, every object which surrounds them, communicates a definite form and impress to their internal nature. This form is not such that it can change and adapt itself to any other a man may choose to receive; and the end is foiled, while the power is destroyed, when we attempt to impose upon that which is already stamped in the soul a form which disagrees with it.

Some artists are happy doing the same thing again and again, but my favorite artists are the ones who evolve and grow, and I want to be one of them.

If you look at who you were a year ago and aren't somewhat embarrassed, you're not growing as a person.

You can get rid of the column. It's a little like staying at a hotel; you get used to the shape of the room, and then you're gone. With a novel you move into town and stay for a long time. That's both comforting and terrifying.