Changing Ourselves Quotes & Sayings

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world. For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small, imperfect stones to the pile. — Alice Walker

We're constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it. — S.J. Watson

When I taught the meditation on sound to the participants at my weekend workshop and had people open to the ringing of their cell phones, I was trying to introduce them to his method. By listening meditatively, we were changing the way we listen, pulling ourselves out of our usual orientation to the world based on our likes and dislikes. Rather than trying to figure out what was going on around us, resisting the unpleasant noises and gravitating toward the mellifluous ones, we were listening in a simpler and more open manner. We had to find and establish another point of reference to listen in this way, one that was outside the ego's usual territory of control. You might say we were simply listening, but it was actually more complex than that. While listening, we were also aware of ourselves listening, and at the same time we were conscious of what the listening evoked within. Unhooked from our usual preoccupations, we were listening from a neutral place. — Mark Epstein

Our task is to change the world for the better, not to adapt ourselves to the world. — Tariq Ramadan

Usually, making excuses is just something we can get away with, rather than challenging or changing ourselves. If you want to change and you want your life to work at a level you've never had before, then take responsibility for it. — Wayne Dyer

I think it is very useful to know ourselves, but when we start naming and labeling, that is dangerous, that gets problematic. It negates that things are always changing. Besides, it's hard to pin a label onto something that's always moving. — Ani DiFranco

If you want to change the world," he said, "who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better. — Ken Robinson

If we understand how larger systems are contributing to our shame and we choose only to change ourselves, we become as negligent as the person who says, "I'm not changing myself, because the system is bad." Context is not the enemy of personal responsibility. Individualism is the enemy of personal responsibility. — Brene Brown

While we are all in the process of becoming as ever-changing, ever-evolving beings ... it's essential to remember that we are also enough, just as we are, right now, in this moment. When we are able to accept ourselves as we are, we are better able to accept others, as they are. Personal growth thrives in an environment of love, acceptance and forgiveness. — Jaeda DeWalt

Think of the most discouraging thing that you are currently carrying or the biggest project you can't seem to tackle. Forget about how it happened, forget about how you got there, just look at the clock, and before that number changes, do one little thing to make it better. After you do, enjoy your moment of victory, and then do it again. In less than the time it takes you to blink, the past will burden you no more. — Dan Pearce

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves. — Jonathan Evison

To change the world, we must begin with ourselves. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

When we speak our words to God with thanksgiving and release them with the faith that our requests will be granted, we put ourselves in a position to receive. God does not change and nature's laws are absolute and impartial. Thus, prayer has the potential for changing us. It connects us with God's spirit, and it is the key to His kingdom. Whatever your religious persuasion, it's a good thing to start every day with prayer. — Donna Fargo

Start Change Ourselves to Better and Then the World — Jan Jansen

We cannot change others, but when we change ourselves, we may end up changing the world. — Melody Beattie

Jesus did not pay the penalty for our misdeeds so we can continue disobeying God with abandon; rather, in dying on the cross, Jesus not only canceled our spiritual debt but also cured our spiritual disease. When we put our trust in Christ, He forgives our sins and also begins the work of changing us from the inside to become holy and loving like Him, and like God our Father. Jesus does this through the Holy Spirit, whom He sent. Salvation by grace does not mean we stay impure sinners forever. Rather, it means that God forgives all our sins and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves by paying the penalty for our sins and working to eliminate sin from our lives. He does this in two stages: while we are mortal, the Holy Spirit changes our hearts so that we begin to live in a way that is more pleasing to God, even though we still commit sin; and then in the resurrection at the end of history, we will be made morally and spiritually perfect beings. — Nabeel Qureshi

The landscape of carcinogens is not static either. We are chemical apes: having discovered the capacity to extract, purify, and react molecules to produce new and wondrous molecules, we have begun to spin a new chemical universe around ourselves. Our bodies, our cells, our genes are thus being immersed and reimmersed in a changing flux of molecules
pesticides, pharmaceutical drugs, plastics, cosmetics, estrogens, food products, hormones, even novel forms of physical impulses, such as radiation and magnetism. Some of these, inevitably, will be carcinogenic. We cannot wish this world away; our task, then, is to sift through it vigilantly to discriminate bona fide carcinogens from innocent and useful bystanders. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

But now that so much is changing, is it not up to us to change? Could we not try to evolve just a little, and gradually take upon ourselves our share in the labour of love? We have been spared all of its toil, and so it has slipped in among our amusements, as a scrap of genuine lace will occasionally fall into a child's toy-box, and give pleasure, and cease to give pleasure, and at lengthe lie there among broken and dismembered things, worse than all the rest. We have been spoiled by easy gratification, like all dilettantes, and are held to be masters. But what if we despised out successes? What if we began to learn, from the very start, the labour of love that has always been done for us? What if we were to go and become beginners, now that so much is changing? — Rainer Maria Rilke

Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves. — Joan D. Chittister

Prayer is less about changing the world than it is about changing ourselves. — David Wolpe

We become great, not by changing the world, but by loving the world and changing ourselves. — Debasish Mridha

Our reliance in this country is on the inquiring, individual human mind. Our strength is founded there; our resilience, our ability to face an ever-changing future and to master it. We are not frozen into the backward-facing impotence of those societies, fixed in the rigidness of an official dogma, to which the future is the mirror of the past. We are free to make the future for ourselves. — Archibald MacLeish

This is perdition: the things to which the heart was attached pass away while the person himself, who is an eternal being, is filled with nothing but emptiness when he should have been filled with God Himself. That is why it is so very important that we turn our focus inward to the source of life that lives forever, even as we ourselves will live forever. — Johan Oscar Smith

The Buddha described his teaching as "going against the stream." The unflinching light of mindful awareness reveals the extent to which we are tossed along in the stream of past conditioning and habit. The moment we decide to stop and look at what is going on (like a swimmer suddenly changing course to swim upstream instead of downstream), we find ourselves battered by powerful currents we had never even suspected - precisely because until that moment we were largely living at their command. — Stephen Batchelor

Constants are widely known for the detestable practice of changing their values; we should prepare ourselves against the consequences of such fickleness — Bertrand Meyer

Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal. — St. Jerome

Start to Better Ourselves and Then the Global. — Jan Jansen

We must cut our coat according to our cloth, and adapt ourselves to changing circumstances. — William Ralph Inge

Real Hope stares us in the face, but we do not see him. Instead, we dig into the mound of human ideas to extract a tiny shard of insight. We tell ourselves that we have finally found the key, the thing that will make a difference. We act on the insight and embrace the delusion of lasting personal change. But before long, disappointment returns. The change was temporary and cosmetic, failing to penetrate the heart of the problem. So, we go back to the mound again, determined this time to dig in the right place. Eureka! We find another shard of insight, seemingly more profound than before. We take it home, study it, and put it into practice. But we always end up in the same place. The good news confronts us with the reality that heart-changing help will never be found in the mound. It will only be found in the Man, Christ Jesus. We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer. In — Paul David Tripp

I think one of the primary themes in my work is the paradox of memory, at once fundamental to our sense of who we are and yet elusive, ever-changing, fragmentary. One way to look at this is to say that, therefore, we ourselves are elusive, ever-changing and fragmentary to ourselves. — Floyd Skloot

I doubt it's a strictly factual account, but these attitudes are deeply imbedded.
Which means that our only hope of changing them, of ending the wrecks, lies not in stopping or even changing the Internet -- even with the best blocking functions, report-abuse functions, real-name transparency protocols, and twenty-four-hour moderation in the world, hate (to quite Jurassic Park) finds a way -- but in changing ourselves, and our definitions of womanhood. We have to stop believing that when a woman does something we don't like, we are qualified and entitled to punish her, violate her, or ruin her life. We have to change our ideas of what a "good" woman, or a "likable" woman, or simply a "woman who can leave her house without fearing for her life because she is a woman," can be. — Sady Doyle

In Hinduism, dharma means realizing our potential: changing ourselves into the best we theoretically can be. What is that? Humans — Devdutt Pattanaik

Love is a devoted madness while marriage is a responsibility. But then it is possible to be devotedly mad and responsible at the same time, yes it is. And so this is how we should begin to see marriage: as it is, for what it is! Marriage needs to cease being an eternal ideal with the predestined ending of death! We must allow it to be and to appear as what it is! Perhaps if we approach marriage with eyes open to the reality of the nature of it, we will stop failing at it! We fail at it because we think of it as something it is not! We are romanced by an ideal that is not in touch with reality and that's why when we begin to discover the reality of it, we see ourselves as failures! It is a wild and blessed thing to want to spend the rest of your adult life with one person, growing and changing together, while stepping deeper into the depths of love; notwithstanding, we must understand that we may not get it "right" the first time. — C. JoyBell C.

Even if we were very good at making everything outside of ourselves be just the way we ourselves want it to be (a ludicrous thought, you must admit), we could fundamentally never get everything perfect: because our desires are always changing, because they are often conflicting, and because the changes of the environment can never keep up with the pace of the wanting mind. The satisfaction of desire as a strategy for happiness will always be a doomed enterprise. — Andrew Olendzki

No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we're going through, even when the medical profession doesn't understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts. — Sarah Hackley

The image of the Goddess inspires women to see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary, as the very force that sustains all life. Through the Goddess we can discover our strength, enlighten our minds, own our bodies, and celebrate our emotions. We can move beyond narrow, constricting roles and become whole. — Starhawk

Literature offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is both journey and surprise. And as everyone knows, even the past is altered, depending on, not the facts, but the interpretation. — Jeanette Winterson

Of course we need to accept ourselves as we are, but we can't stop there. We also need to value ourselves enough make needed changes. — Steve Goodier

We in the Jewish community must ask ourselves what role we are going to play in changing policies and practices that discriminate against LGBT Americans. We have a special responsibility and civic duty to ensure that all Americans are treated with dignity and equality. — Lynn Schusterman

It would be a grand thing for any community, large or small, to set aside even five minutes of the day for serious contemplation. If nothing more were to result than the recognition of such a feeling as "community" it would be a great step forward. If it be true that we have not yet accepted the fact that we are members of "one world," or even of one nation, how much more true it is that we are not even members of the little communities to which we belong. We become more and more atomized, more and more separate and isolate. We hand our problems over to our respective governments, absolving ourselves of duty, conscience, and initiative. We do not believe in personal example, though we profess to worship that great exemplar Jesus the Christ. We hide from the face of reality: it is too terrible, we think. Yet it is we, only we, who have created this hideous world. And it is we who will change it - by changing our own inner vision. — Henry Miller

Our surroundings fade and we exist in unison, two people who once shared cups of coffee, unprecedentedly ourselves in a changing world. — Caroline George

In daily life we experience suffering more often than pleasure. If we are patient, in the sense of taking suffering voluntarily upon ourselves, even if we are not capable of doing this physically, then we will not lose our capacity for judgement. We should remember that if a situation cannot be changed, there is no point in worrying about it. If it can be changed, then there is no need to worry about it either, we should simply go about changing it. — Dalai Lama XIV

ANGUISH EMERGES FROM craving for life to be other than it is. In the face of a changing world, such craving seeks consolation in something permanent and reliable, in a self that is in control of things, in a God who is in charge of destiny. The irony of this strategy is that it turns out to be the cause of what it seeks to dispel. In yearning for anguish to be assuaged in such ways, we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving for life to be other than it is. We find ourselves spinning in a vicious circle. The more acute the anguish, the more we want to be rid of it, but the more we want to be rid of it, the more acute it gets. Such — Stephen Batchelor

Keep in mind too, our failures serve to teach us, and usually teach us more than our successes do. What we may perceive as a failure is also an opportunity for someone else to rise to the occasion and perform a mitzvah, or mitzvot. Do not begrudge someone their joyous performance of mitzvot. Sometimes, perhaps even more often then you may think, what we consider our failures were blessings in disguise for ourselves, or others, or everyone. Abraham did not change the world just because he himself changed, and followed his own destiny. He changed the world through his giving others opportunities to rise to their own greatness. — Laura Weakley

Maybe it's working because I'm an author, and maybe it's working because Karen works like life depends on this bookstore, or because we have a particularly brilliant staff, or because Nashville is a city that is particularly sympathetic to all things independent. Maybe we just got lucky. But my luck has made me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible. Amazon doesn't get to make all the decisions; the people can make them by how and where they spend their money. If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read the book. This is how we change the world: we grab hold of it. We change ourselves. — Ann Patchett

Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it's the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It's the body that is changing around that ageless center. — David Lynch

We create the world we live in. If we want to change what we don't like in the world, we must start by changing what we don't like about ourselves. — Sharon Gannon

This world is what we have made of it. If it is ruthless today it is because we have made it ruthless by our attitudes. If we change ourselves we can change the world, and changing ourselves begins with changing our language and methods of communication — Arun Gandhi

We can all change the people around us by changing ourselves. — Colin Beavan

They say we live in hard times. They say the world is full of suffering and pain and ignorance and violence. But is that not better than helpless, grinned and beared mediocrity? Is this not the time of opportunity? When will we learn the importance of peace, if not in war? When will we learn the importance of loving ourselves except through self-hatred? How else will we come together except to realize how we hurt when we are apart? The world is not full of horror. It is full of opportunity. It is not lacking in love. It is hungry for it. So eat. So feed. — Vironika Tugaleva

I think we owe it to our children to share our wisdom. If we share our wisdom for the purpose of changing our children, then that's hitting them over the head with a hammer or shoving something down their throats. If the wisdom turns into advice, that's selfish. But if we simply share ourselves and let our children know our hearts, then it's a gift. And I think it's a gift we're responsible for giving them. — Daniel Gottlieb

Ego is this this higher conscious concept that we have of ourselves and we feel that we must live by it with a closed mind. We can be Self Aware of this concept or purely just blinded. I think the answer to this problem is being Self Aware and changing our current perception for the better. — Matthew Donnelly

We are all spiritual beings, having a spiritual experience, while in physical bodies. What this means is that we continue to be through eternity, always changing and expanding. When we accept this, we realize that there are no limitations, other than those that we impose upon ourselves. Mastery is within our power - if we wish it to be. — Susan Barbara Apollon

By changing the way we perceive ourselves and our work, we can dramatically improve our results. USING — Shawn Achor

We are intelligent atoms. We are intelligent organic structures. We can change who we are. We can heal ourselves. With genetic engineering, we are considering changing the physiological structure of the body. — Frederick Lenz

We are changing the way we govern ourselves - not just in the way we work in New Delhi, but also in the way we work together with state governments, districts and cities. Because we know, as you do, that our vision may be formed in Delhi, but our success will be determined by state capitals. — Narendra Modi

Some of the most innocuous inventions have proven earth-shattering, with reverberations felt around the planet. The Internet is the poster child for disruptive technology, but even such inventions as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPod have rocked their respective industries by changing how we entertain ourselves. — Lynda Resnick

Statistically, you can take two people, give them the same quantity of God's Word, and the one with the most Christian friends will be the one who's most likely to apply it. So the real question we need to ask ourselves is this, "Are we intimately connected with other people in the body of Christ?" If not, it doesn't matter how many sermons or worship experiences you ingest. You have very low odds of actually changing. — Peter Haas

It takes great courage to accept the constant changes of the emotions within ourselves, and even more audacity to express them whenever they occur and without filter or delay. — Nityananda Das

It is vital that we are equipped with the humility to understand that changing the world and keeping innovation alive require that we change ourselves. — Whitney Johnson

We are images of Adonai, and are responsible for one another, and for taking care of all on earth created by Adonai: just as Adonai is responsible for everything created. We learned to differentiate between good and evil. We can even create order out of chaos, as Adonai did on day one. We not only procreate, but also teach the next generations. (Deuteronomy 6:7). All of these abilities and responsibilities, we inherited when created in the image of Adonai. Every person also has a spark of Adonai within. We can choose to ignore this, or to embrace this. We have the power of choice. With this great power, comes great responsibility. You see, not only were we given the ability to reason, but also, we have the ability to create a new and different future, because we have the ability to change, both ourselves, and the world. — Laura Weakley

As meditation deepens, compulsions, cravings, and fits of emotions begin to lose their power to dictate our behavior. We see clearly that choices are possible: we can say yes, or we can say no.
... "All we are is the result of what we have thought." By changing our mode of thinking, we can remake ourselves completely. — Eknath Easwaran

Most people can look back over the years and identify a time and place at which their lives changed significantly. Whether by accident or design, these are the moments when, because of a readiness within us and a collaboration with events occurring around us, we are forced to seriously reappraise ourselves and the conditions under which we live and to make certain choices that will affect the rest of our lives. — Frederic Flach

Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves. It was a smashing time, and then it ended, because that's what times do. — Rob Sheffield

You can't change the world, but you can change yourself. That adage suits consumer capitalism perfectly, since the illusion of changing ourselves is a successfully maintained through shopping. — Madeleine Bunting

It is a mistake to think we will get rid of anger by changing everything in the world that makes us angry. Instead we should look to change ourselves. — Dalai Lama XIV

We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better. — J.K. Rowling

When we are acting like God, we are being ourselves! The ramifications of having God as our Daddy (rather than some ape dragging his knuckles in the African jungle somewhere) is life changing. I hope you can see that what you believe about your origin makes a difference in the way you value yourself and humanity in general. — Kris Vallotton

If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us-secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us. — Elizabeth Lesser

We are inspired by the God that we see in others and suddenly we find ourselves changing. We find ourselves giving more. We find that our lives become rather amazingly beautiful. — Frederick Lenz

Change isn't about looking for other people to change; it's about changing our own point of view, which also means changing how we communicate with others and how we look at ourselves. — Michael Jascz

She says to me, but were we ever intimate? How intimate were we really? Sure, there were the ordinary familiarity-type things - our bodies, our bodily discharges and stains and seepages, an encyclopedic knowledge of each other's family grudges, knowledge of each other's early school yard slights, our dietary peccadilloes, our tv remote control channel-changing styles. And yet ...
And yet?
And yet in the end did we ever really give each other completely to the other? Do either of us even know how to really share ourselves? Imagine the house is on fire and I reach to save one thing - what is it? Do you know? Imagine that I am drowning and I reach within myself to save that one memory which is me - what is it? Do you know? What things would either of us reach for? Neither of us know. After all these years we just wouldn't know. — Douglas Coupland

We resonate with one another's sorrows because we are interconnected. Being whole and simultaneously part of a larger whole, we can change the world simply by changing ourselves. If I become a center of love and kindness in this moment, then in a perhaps small but hardly insignificant way, the world now has a nucleus of love and kindness it lacked the moment before. This benefits me and it benefits others. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

We can change our whole life and attitude of the people around us simply by changing ourselves.. — Rudolf Dreikurs

It is just as necessary to forgive ourselves as it is to forgive others, and the principal reason why forgiveness seemed so difficult is because we have neglected to forgive ourselves. — Christian D. Larson

A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other's alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that's for everyone to enjoy... — Lo Nathamundi

Choosing to do something significant in life usually requires us to sacrifice our personal convenience, but the results can be life changing for ourselves and those around us. — Jeff Shinabarger

People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they're not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we've fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter. — Seth Godin

The craving to change the world is perhaps a reflection of the craving to change ourselves. — Eric Hoffer

The second direction of prayer lies in us addressing our own circumstances and changing them ourselves — Sunday Adelaja

Changing the world is like trying to straighten a dog's tail. However much you may try, you won't succeed. But although the tail won't straighten, if you keep trying every day, at least you will put on some muscle. Similarly, even though it is difficult to make a change, our effort to do so in itself brings positive results. It will help us change. Without waiting for others to change,if we change ourselves first, that will make a difference. Instead of worrying about results, focus on doing our best in what we are engaged in. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Provided we can escape from the museums we carry around inside us, provided we can stop selling ourselves tickets to the galleries in our own skulls, we can begin to contemplate an art which re-creates the goal of the sorcerer: changing the structure of reality by the manipulation of living symbols ... Art tells gorgeous lies that come true. — Hakim Bey

While we flatter ourselves that things remain the same, they are changing under our very eyes from year to year, from day to day. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Besides, Mrs. Quesnt, did it never occur to you that we are not changing at all-that rather, we are simply becoming more ourselves? — Galen Beckett

We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live. — George F. Kennan

No one needs to hit rock bottom to change. And yet so many people do, only because most of us are unskilled in communicating with ourselves.
Stress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, headaches, illness ... these are all symptoms of a bigger problem. You're trying to tell yourself something. Loudly.
Listen now or listen later. There is no ignoring the call. — Vironika Tugaleva

The truth is, that the concept of God which I had always entertained, and which I had accused Christians of teaching to the world, was a concept of a being who was simply impossible. He was infinite and yet finite; perfect and imperfect; eternal and yet changing - subject to all the variations of emotion, love, sorrow, hate, revenge, that men are prey to ...
What a relief it was for me, now, to discover not only that no idea of ours, let alone any image, could adequately represent God, but also that we should not allow ourselves to be satisfied with any such knowledge of Him. — Thomas Merton

But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace will sometimes fall into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing? — Rainer Maria Rilke

We're changing ourselves to fit the world instead of changing the world to fit women. — Gloria Steinem

Well we are nothing if not re-inventive. With every life experience we learn what to not do ever again and how to adapt to our current situations. We are always learning about ourselves and changing. I seriously don't know anyone that has it all figured out, and if there is I want to punch them in the face. — Allison B. Levine

We can position ourselves to receive God's promises, but it will take a lot of stretching, moving, breaking and changing! — Alisa Hope Wagner

In my experience, in the real-estate business past success stories are generally not applicable to new situations. We must continually reinvent ourselves, responding to changing times with innovative new business models. — Akira Mori

Our lives are often a continuous betrayal and denial of what came before, we twist and distort everything as time passes, and yet we are still aware, however much we deceive ourselves, that we are the keepers of secrets and mysteries, however trivial. How tiring having always to move in the shadows or, even more difficult, in the half-light, which is never the same, always changing, every person has his light areas and his dark areas, they change according to what he knows and to what day it is and who he's talk to and what he wants ... Sometimes it is only the weariness brought on by the shadow that impels one to tell all the facts, the way someone hiding will suddenly reveal himself, either the pursuer or the pursued, simply in order to bring the game to an end and to step free from what has become a kind of enchantment. — Javier Marias

Nearly everyone is aware of dramatic changes in the world. Yet we continue to live in the assumption that we can ride out the changes without changing ourselves, coasting, as we have always coasted, on the historic wave of human development. What it will take to wake us up is a wave of equal size traveling in the opposite direction. That wave is already on its way. — Verlyn Klinkenborg

The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. — David Harvey

We need to look at the repetitions in the stories we tell ourselves [and] at the process of the stories rather than merely their surface content. Then we can begin to experiment with changing the filter through which we look at the world, start to edit the story and thus regain flexibility where we have been getting stuck — Philippa Perry

Science has discovered that, like any work of literature, the human genome is a text in need of commentary, for what Eliot said of poetry is also true of DNA: 'all meanings depend on the key of interpretation.' What makes us human, and what makes each of us his or her own human, is not simply the genes that we have buried into our base pairs, but how our cells, in dialogue with our environment, feed back to our DNA, changing the way we read ourselves. Life is a dialectic. — Jonah Lehrer

The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle. — Bhikkhu Bodhi

The ultimate solution is not in the hands of the government. The solution falls on each and every individual, with guidance from family, friends and community. The #1 responsibility for each of us is to change ourselves with hope that others will follow. This is of greater importance than working on changing the government; that is secondary to promoting a virtuous society. If we can achieve this, then the government will change. — Ron Paul

If we define ourselves by each of the ever-changing feelings that cascade through us, how will we ever feel at home in our own bodies and minds? — Sharon Salzberg