Changing People's Lives Quotes & Sayings

I think we rarely recognize the fifth business in our lives at the time those people are changing us. — Stephen King

categorical imperative that it is with you. You think first of getting the biggest possible output in the shortest possible time. We think first of human beings and their satisfactions. Changing jobs doesn't make for the biggest output in the fewest days. But most people like it better than doing one kind of job all their lives. If it's a choice between mechanical efficiency and human satisfaction, we choose satisfaction. — Aldous Huxley

Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. "Exercise spills over," said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. "There's something about it that makes other good habits easier. — Charles Duhigg

I want to figure out how people can go on with their lives when mine has changed so much. I want to relearn how to breathe without carrying this big, empty cave inside me. — Edwidge Danticat

This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused and gentle smile. — Leo Tolstoy

People's lives change. To keep all your old friends is like keeping all your old clothes
pretty soon your closet is so jammed and everything so crushed you can't find anything to wear. Help these friends when they need you; bless the years and happy times when you meant a lot to each other, but try not to have the guilts if new people mean more to you now. — Helen Gurley Brown

Most people never realize that 80% of the work is done before you step in a room. That's why they spend their entire lives grasping for magical tactics instead of changing their entire mindset. — Ramit Sethi

Maybe it's time to realize that our greatest contributions are not the monuments that we construct, but the lives that we change because we took the time to add to the monument which is them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

His eyes once did land on a longer piece of writing in which she put down her thoughts about the mystery of time. How one moment flowed into the next and that into the following, and so on, making an endless chain of tiny packets that defined one's existence. How no one could know what any approaching moment might hold. How they whisper by like leaves in a stream or hurtle past with great uproar, each with the prospect of changing the lives of people and nations. — Donald Smith

Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993. However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of amateur pornography. There is no justification for the amount of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are clearly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were these people fifteen years ago? Were there really millions of women in 1986 turning to their husbands and saying, 'You know, I would love to have total strangers masturbate to images of me deep-throating a titanium dildo, but there's simply no medium for that kind of entertainment. I guess we'll just have to sit here and watch Falcon Crest again. — Chuck Klosterman

My goal in changing how the world thinks about religion is not to make people stop believing in a god or gods; I care little for what people desire to believe in their own private lives. However, I care deeply about what they do with those beliefs. If their religious beliefs teach intolerance and hatred, are used to support war, genocide, female genital mutilation, honor killings or laws that protect or honor such rituals or beliefs, then we have a problem and I will stand up against every such instance and fight it with every means available to me. — Dan Arel

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

Now the sun is wide awake, baring its teeth, making the sweat run down people's back. Before it will make its way across the sky and into the waiting arms of the Arabian Sea, so much will have happened: migrations into the city, births, marriages, dowry deaths, illicit love affairs, pay raises, first kisses, bankruptcy filings, traffic accidents, business deals, money changing hands, plant shutdowns, gallery openings, poetry readings, political discussions, evictions. Every event in human history will repeat itself today. Everything that ever happened will happen again today. All if life lived in a day. A day, a day. A silver urn of promise and hope. Another chance. At reinvention, at resurrection, at reincarnation. A day. The least and most of all of our lives. — Thrity Umrigar

There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met, which gained for him the general goodwill. This was his acknowledgement of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual, which used to excite and irritate Pierre, now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and evoked from him an amused and gentle smile. — Leo Tolstoy

In the third section, A Discussion, people discuss what The Story meant to them and how they are going to use it in their work and in their lives. Some readers of this book's early manuscript preferred to stop at the end of The Story, without reading further, and interpret its meaning for themselves. Others enjoyed reading A Discussion that follows because it stimulated their thinking about how they might apply what they'd learned to their own situation. Everyone knows that not all change is good or even necessary. But in a world that is constantly changing, it is to our advantage to learn how to adapt and enjoy something better. In any case, I hope each time you re-read Who Moved My Cheese? you will find something new and useful in the brief story, as I do, and that it will help you deal with change and bring you success, whatever you decide success is for you. I hope you enjoy what you discover, and I wish you well. — Spencer Johnson

We must know that when we invite people into our lives, we are not just inviting people; but we are inviting experiences into our lives, as well. The time that we will spend with the people that we welcome in, will be the time spent on creating experiences in our lives. We are not really taught this. We are not taught that attached to a person is a world, and in that world our feelings and thoughts will mingle with the feelings and thoughts of the other person. Ultimately, we shape our lives depending upon our choices of the people we take in, and also depending upon the people that we couldn't choose. People are so much more than just lumps of bones, skin, and feelings. When they said one person can change the whole world, what that means is that if you change the life of one person, you are already changing one whole world. And vice versa. So be careful. Be brave, but be careful. — C. JoyBell C.

People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There's no villain, no "mean guy" who wants them to live meaningless lives, it's just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless. — Robert M. Pirsig

The Jedi is a practitioner of mind mastery. He realizes that whatever they are experiencing, they are creating and that they can change their lives in an instant by changing their thoughts, their focus and the way they are observing and engaging the energy of the world around them and the people who they've invited into their lives to play whatever roles they've chosen them to play. — Stephen Richards

You eternals have long lives, but short memories. The changing people have short lives, but we do not forget. — Neil Gaiman

We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important things is to be a good human being. — Dalai Lama

Researchers have found similar dynamics in dozens of other settings, including individuals' lives. Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. — Charles Duhigg

Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century. — Dennis Prager

How will letting same-sex couples marry affect your marriage? It won't, but it will have an impact on how marriage will be taught in schools and how children understand its meaning and purpose as the foundation of the family. Changing the law to accommodate same-sex couples requires marriage to be taught in schools as merely the public recognition of a committed relationship with no connection to children and family. . . . This will affect the attitudes young people will have about marriage and family and will likely affect decisions they make about marriage, children and family in their lives. — William B. May

Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins. — Margaret J. Wheatley

that the human brain expects permanence. The cup is where you put it. The car is where you parked it (if it hasn't been towed away). The wine is still in the refrigerator where you left it. It's only people, the most complex, important, influential, life-changing elements of our lives, who are there and then are shockingly not-there. And it's surprisingly hard to get one's brain around that. So — Nick Alexander

I mean if it wasn't for Earl Scruggs, guys like me wouldn't be doing what we're doing. I mean, he's changed so many people's lives, honestly. I was thinking about all the thousands of people that live in Nashville, like myself, that there's no reason a guy from New York would end up down there if it wasn't for the sound of Earl Scruggs' banjo coming over the airwaves and just changing my life. — Earl Scruggs

Storytellers, by the very act of telling, communicate a radical learning that changes lives and the world: telling stories is a universally accessible means through which people make meaning. — Chris Cavanaugh

People who look like human beings are not human beings. Strange people are amongst us. We must be careful. Our lives are changing. Our gods are silent. Our ancestors are silent. A great something is going to come from the sky and change the face of the earth. — Ben Okri

An effective U.S. policy toward Sudan - one capable of changing the situation in the south and affecting the lives of its people - will require top-level attention and a great deal of energy. It should have three elements: aid, diplomacy, and financial disclosure. — Elliott Abrams

Current ethos in Silicon Valley is that if you build a website that people keep coming back to and is changing the lives of millions, you can eventually make money. — Daphne Koller

If people are not sharing their faith in your church, if they're not having a quiet time, if they're not living godly lives, then you need to change your style of preaching. You are obviously not seeing lives changed through the Word of God. So what is the problem? The problem isn't the Word. The problem is your preaching style. — Bruce Wilkinson

My life changed in a huge way. Mentally, I've been preparing for it for over a year now. To me, it's bigger than that. For me, it shows a lot of people that you need to fight to be in your kids' lives sometimes. You fight until you can't fight any more. That's all I was trying to be, a father in his kids' lives. — Dwyane Wade

Be nice to your parents. When they made the decision to have a child, whether it was planned or not, they were changing their entire lives to do the best they could for this new human being. A lot of young people, we don't understand that. — Jason Mraz

The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve that freedom which is a far more important part of our lives than any ideology or orthodoxy, the freedom that dissolves orthodoxies and inspires solutions to the ever-changing challenges of the future. I hope that your library and mine will continue in this way to be dangerous for many years to come. — Edmund S. Morgan

Most people live in fear of some terrible event changing their lives, the death of a loved one or a serious illness. For the chronically ill, this terrible event has already happened, and we have been let in on an amazing secret: You survive. You adapt, and your life changes, but in the end you go on, with whatever compromises you have been forced to make, whatever losses you have been forced to endure. You learn to balance your fears with the simple truth that you must go on living. — Jamie Weisman

We make up any excuse to preserve myths about people we love, but the reverse is also true; if we dislike an individual we adamantly resist changing our opinion, even when somebody offers proof of his decency, because it's vital to have myths about both the gods and devils in our lives. — Marlon Brando

We must admit that simply knowing the contents of the Bible is not a sure route to spiritual growth. There is an aweful assumption in evangelical churches that if we can just get the Word of God into people's heads, then the Spirit of God will apply it to their hearts. That assumption is aweful, not because the Spirit never does what the assumption supposes, but because it excused pastors and leaders from the responsibility to tangle with people's lives. Many remain safely hidden behind pulpits, hopelessly out of touch with the struggles of their congregations, proclaiming the Scriptures with a pompous accuracy that touches no one. Pulpits should provide bridges, not barriers, to life-changing relationships. — Larry Crabb

I know that in the rap game you've got a lot of people, that come from poverty, was born in poverty and if it wasn't for hiphop they'd still be living in that. So when I think of hiphop, I think hiphop saves lifes, hiphop changes lives. — Jon Connor

Diamond Dallas saved my life. He didn't have to, but that's the kind of guy he is. He's helped so many people with his DDP Yoga. It's just incredible with the lives he's changing, the lives he's affecting. I am so honored to be part of that. — Jake Roberts

I do believe that books can change lives and give people this kind of language they wouldn't have had otherwise, — Jacqueline Woodson

Too many people in Washington care about power institutions, not caring about changing the lives of everyday Americans. — Kevin McCarthy

In every instance when my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives. — George W. Bush

Dear God,
Reveal to me through stories something of what it is like to walk around in someone else's shoes.
Show me something about myself in the stories I read, something that needs changing, a thought, a feeling or attitude.
Deliver me from myself, O God, and from the parachial and sometimes prejudiced views I have of other people, other nations, other races, other religions.
Enlarge by heart with a story, and change me by the characters I meet there.
May some of the light from their lives spill over into mine, giving me illumination where there was once ignorance, compassion where there was once contempt. — Ken Gire

The Constitution is the fundamental rule for people to live in society. If the rule no longer suits the lives of the general public due to changing times, it should be changed. That goes for regular laws as well as the Constitution. — Ichiro Ozawa

I have learned that we may change the very nature of our thoughts, by changing the tone of voice we are thinking in! No one has ever paid attention to what tone of voice they are speaking in, during the time that their words are going on in their heads! People only pay attention to their tones of voice when their words are on their tongues! But it is the tone of voice we think in, that is responsible for creating the energy we emit. You may be screaming on the inside and even though you are calm on the outside, you are going to create the energy of your thoughts. If you want real change in your life, in your mind - really, just change the tone of voice that you think in! — C. JoyBell C.

Kindness is a calling. Caring about people is powerful. Love changes lives. — Rachel Hamilton

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

I was a normal person, living in a rough area with a foreign mother, I endured it and came out of the other side to help hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to change their lives just like I had mine. — Stephen Richards

This was his recognition of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by words, and his acknowledgment of the possibility of every man thinking, feeling, and seeing things in his own way. This legitimate individuality of every man's views, which formerly troubled or irritated Pierre, now became the basis of the sympathy he felt for other people and the interest that he took in them. The difference, sometimes the complete contradiction, between man's opinions and their lives, and between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him a gentle, ironic smile. — Leo Tolstoy

She felt as if things were moving past her as she lay stretched on the bed under the single sheet. But it's not landscape any longer, she thought; it's people's lives, their changing lives. — Virginia Woolf

I'd used people's stories and their lives to bolster my political arguments for changing welfare. Now, however, I was running into the people themselves, and I realized that using anyone's tragedy for political gain was cowardly. — David Kuo

But most of the time when I wear them, I don't know, I'm kind of hoping - foolishly, probably - that people will read it, get the message, change their lives for the better, even if it's only in the smallest of ways, and make the world a better place." Knox was still grinning as he buttered his toast. "So you're saying your shirts are like a butterfly effect?" "Pretty much, yeah. And when they hand me my Nobel Peace Prize in fifty years for changing the world, one snarky shirt at a time, I'm going to wave it in your face and chant 'Told ya so' about a million times. — Nicole Williams

People's lives are delicate; you cannot interfere with them without running the risk of changing them profoundly. A chance remark, a careless involvement, may make the difference between a life of happiness and one of sorrow — Alexander McCall Smith

[On swinging for the fences] Ultimately, you have the potential to build a significant business with the potential to have a positive impact on millions of people's lives. — Steve Case

I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eager to talk about, but every now and then when I meet someone, maybe someone of my parents' generation, and I tell them that I write poetry, they'll begin to recite something that they memorized when they were in school that has never left them. — Tracy K. Smith

Maybe part of the reason that love becomes such a volatile force in our lives when it's supposed to be so still and beautiful is that we keep reaching for that forever love. We can't just let it be what it is. We try to make feelings and interest sustain themselves for years and years when they just don't have that kind of staying power. But how much of it is a result of our own changing and how much is the fact that forever love comes with so many expectations and too much pressure? What if it's really that nobody is to blame, other than whoever instilled in us the idea that "forever" was the ultimate kind of love? Because what if we stopped expecting and started just being. I think that's what scares people. I think they choose to not love someone because of what it means for the long-term instead of having any interspersed bits of love. But those bits might be all we ever have. It's out of them that the rest grows. — Brianna Wiest

People sometimes are under the impression that finding their property corners should cost as much as changing their oil or blowing out their sprinklers. What they don't realize is that land surveyors are required to stand behind their work for the rest of their lives. — Mark Mason

The Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our births but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again, how their whole lives were changed with new significance. — Frederick Buechner

The world we inhabit is abundant beyond our wildest imagination. There are trees, dreams, sunrises; there are thunderstorms, shadows, rivers; there are wars, flea bites, love affairs; there are the lives of people, Gods, entire galaxies. The simplest human action varies from one person and occasion to the next-how else would we recognize our friends only from their gait, posture, voice, and divine their changing moods? Only a tiny fraction of this abundance affects our minds. This is a blessing, not a drawback. A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed. — Paul Feyerabend

History is about ordinary people living their ordinary lives, just as we do today, while all around the world is changing. It makes heroes out of some people and victims out of others. — Vicky Adin

All people should disclose whether they submit to Allah or not. Those who are against us are our enemies and must be fought. That includes people who call themselves Muslims but who don't lead their lives as such - people who drink, who don't pray, who don't fast, who have constantly changing partners and who are unable to recite the Koran. — Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

The truth is, those people we feel drawn to most might not be intended as love interests, but rather as life-changing, life-altering presences that come into our lives for reasons we can't yet understand. — Tonya Hurley

Look at the two of us, barely out of childhood and already we're too old-fashioned for this changing world. Is it possible to be born old? Because I certainly feel it sometimes. How can we hope to stand against unstoppable progress; how can we possibly win a war against the forces of science?"
Oskan snorted.
"Which question do you want me to answer first? Born old? Yes, right now I feel ninety. And as for the rest, we're not fighting progress or science, they're both ideas that belong to people. Ideas that should help us to understand the beauty of our world and improve the lives of everything that lives in it. But the Empire has kidnapped them, and progress of its sort means sweeping aside everything that isn't new, whether good or bad. And to the Empire science is just a means of creating more efficient ways of killing people. — Stuart Hill

In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world — Margaret Mead

Happiness requires changing yourself and changing your world. It requires pursuing your own goals and fitting in with others. Different people at different times in their lives will benefit from drawing more heavily on one approach or the other. — Jonathan Haidt

Change makes us confront the great unknown. It introduces different things into our lives. Different places. Different ideas. Different people. It's all hard to accept at times, and change can often be a little scary. But if there's one fact that I've learned from raising a family, from running several businesses, from serving in Congress and now as Governor, it's that nothing has ever grown without changing. — Bob Riley

Art is not meant to change the world, but when you see people interacting, when you see an impact on their lives, then I guess in a smaller way, this is changing the world. So, that's what I believe in. That's why I'm into creating more and more interactions. — JR

The only stuff we looked at were incidents for which there are a paper trail ... (and) everything we looked up was full of lies. (Winfrey said) the belief this book is changing the lives of people trumps the fact that maybe the story is a fake. You would expect somebody in her position would take the ethical stand. — William Bastone

For the first time he considers the full emotional dimensions of the day. His life is changing but his parent's lives are changing too. Like a habitat, abruptly deprived of a major species, the household will be wrenched into realignment by his departure. Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are. For 18 years he has experienced their existence only in so far as it is related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other? What aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances held in check by the shared project of child rearing will now in his absence, lurch into the light? — Justin Cronin

Sometimes I think of all the people who have travelled on their own across the world, people who have gone far from home, from villages to sprawling cities where nothing and no one is familiar. My mother has also travelled - across time for more than nine decades, from one era to the next, from a world she knew to another where much she was taught does not apply. Things are changing so fast; there is no period of adjustment now for anyone. My mother tries to keep up, but it is such a complicated trip. The faces that time taught her to trust are all missing. She lives in a foreign land where it is up to me to try to make her feel at home. She has walked so far, through time. — George Hodgman

Most successful people can identify one minute, one moment, where their lives changed, and it usually occurred in times of adversity. — Willie Jolley