Quotes & Sayings About Rapid Change

In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves. — Douglas Coupland

The changes in thinking about same-sex marriage have come slowly at first and then in rapid course. If such change is possible in this area, is it also possible in the vexed and sordid realm of race relations? — Barack Obama

Once, someone told me that the music had been created by God and that rapid movement was necessary for people to get in touch with themselves. For years, i felt that this was true, and now I 'm being forced to do the most difficult thing in the world - slow down. Why is patience so important?"
"Because it makes us pay attention."
"Isn't the soul more important?"
"of course it is, but if your soul could communicate with your brain, you would be able to change even more things — Paulo Coelho

Probably people always feel that they are living in a time of transition, but we can hardly be mistaken perhaps in thinking that this is an era of particularly momentous change, rapid and proceeding at an ever quickening rate. — Emily Greene Balch

All these crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a brilliant dinner companion, or to see your favourite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities. — George Eliot

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

Change forced by others is difficult to accept. And too rapid a change causes instability. — Amish Tripathi

Horst passed him a bottle he had picked up in his rapid trip from there to here. Remarkably, it's contents had survived the transit. "Drink this," he said, unmoved by Cabal's anger. "You need to save your voice for your next session."
Cabal took the bottle testily and swigged from it. there was a moments pause, just long enough for Cabal's expression to change from testy to horrified revulsion. He spat the liquid violently onto the grass like a man who has got absent-minded with the concentrated nitric acid and a mouth pipette. He glared at Horst as he took off his spectacles and wiped his suddenly weeping eyes "Disinfectant? You give me disinfectant to drink?"
Horst's surprise was replaced with mild amusement. "It's root beer, Johannes. Have you never had root beer?"
Cabal looked suspiciously at him, then at the bottle "People drink this?"
"Yes."
"For non-medical reasons?"
"That's right."
Cabal shook his head in open disbelief. "They must be insane. — Jonathan L. Howard

Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today. — Theodore Kaczynski

But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis ... The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten. — James Clerk Maxwell

Many of the issues we face in dealing with rapid climate change are well suited to an engineering mind. — Larry Brilliant

The typical journalist's typical lead for the typical Canadian story nowadays is along this line: that Canadians are hard at work trying to gain a reputation as a nation of rapid social change. — Stockwell Day

College education is the great Filipino dream. But in a world of rapid technological change, getting a job or keeping it depends as much on how well one reasons as how well one uses his hands. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Learning how to respond to and master the process of change - and even to excel at it - is a critical leadership skill for the twenty-first century. Constant, rapid change will be a fact of life for all of us. — Jennifer James

Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating- or toward the abyss. — Stephen Jay Gould

Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The issue of homosexuality in the church is complex, highly charged, and defined by misrecognized fears related to rapid social change and the perceived threat to familiar social institutions and the sense of security they represent. Underlying this conflict are the church's historic discomfort with issues of sexuality, and dualistic constructions that codify that unease into categories of sexual insiders (monogamous heterosexuals and celibates) and outsiders (everybody else). These have been magnified in recent years by cultural differences between different generations and African countries where the church has grown. — Jane Ellen Nickell

We live in a time of such rapid change and growth of knowledge that only he who is in a fundamental sense a scholar-that is, a person who continues to learn and inquire-can hope to keep pace, let alone play the role of guide. — Nathan M. Pusey

Darwin uneasily accepted that evolution might occasionally proceed a little faster than he had at first envisaged, but in general he simply dismissed Thompson's claim; although he could not disprove it, he remained stubbornly convinced that he was right. Darwin felt that evolution change, like Lyell's geological forces, must proceed at a respectable pace; apart from anything else, more rapid change hinted at supernatural, perhaps even divine, intervention in the Earth's history - approaches that increasingly had no place in properly philosophical explanations. — Jim Endersby

Raising a child is a time of RAPID CHANGE! From the ages of 0 to 19, a PARENT can age over 30 years! — Tanya Masse

I am very pleased with the progress of the new CBS Corporation. The Company's rapid pace of change and innovative approach to emerging business opportunities can be seen in the many strategic announcements we have made over these past few months. The more focused and more nimble organization we sought to create has become a reality and that aggressive spirit of excellence and innovation will continue to benefit shareholders for many years to come. — Sumner Redstone

In a world of rapid change, we each need to garner as much useful information as possible, sort through it in a way that meets our unique circumstances, calibrate it with what we already know, and re-circulate it with others who share our goals. — Marcia Conner

Bodies are slow of growth, but are rapid in their dissolution.
[Lat., Corpora lente augescent, cito extinguuntur.] — Tacitus

Rapid change of conditions in all human affairs bring unexpected results. — William C. Oates

Climate has always changed. It always has and always will. Sea level has always changed. Ice sheets come and go. Life always changes. Extinctions of life are normal. Planet Earth is dynamic and evolving. Climate changes are cyclical and random. Through the eyes of a geologist, I would be really concerned if there were no change to Earth over time. In the light of large rapid natural climate changes, just how much do humans really change climate? — Ian Plimer

In times of turbulence and rapid change, you must constantly be re-evaluating yourself relative to the new realities. — Brian Tracy

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy. — J. Paul Getty

Being really good at 'learning how to learn,' as President Bill Brody of Johns Hopkins put it, will be an enormous asset in an era of rapid change and innovation, when new jobs will be phased in and old ones phased out faster than ever. — Thomas Friedman

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering. — Ron Suskind

Were it not for the mind change of Sai devotees the world would already have fallen into complete chaos. The deterioration of mind and man has been very rapid and abrupt, even precipitous during the last fifteen years. That the world is not in total destruction is due to the change of mind of Sai devotees and to Sai's grace. — Sathya Sai Baba

We are at a critical point where rapid change is forcing us to look not just to new ways of solving problems but to new problems to solve. — Tim Brown

I found everything so remote but, at the same time, familiar when I occasionally looked into the mountains, rocks, pine trees and plums depicted in old literati paintings. My innermost feeling which was awakened by the same mountains, rocks, pine trees and plums has been totally and utterly changed. Moreover, like an apparition, it hides deep down in my vessels. The very trees and rocks have become the storage of memories and emotions from various eras. Forced by the rapid change of time and perspective, I cannot help but feel urged to face up to these things once again. — Zhang Xiaogang

One piece of bad luck was rapid technical change, which was a weapon that oddball upstarts could use against the enormous gray corporations. — Michael Lewis

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.
... it was real muggy earlier, hot enough to cook a bear. Anyway, you get used a rapid weather change. — Annie Proulx

Technology is characterized by constant change, rapid innovation, creative destruction, and revolutionary products. — Marsha Blackburn

One way for investors to protect themselves from a rapid change in the price of a stock is to use a limit order rather than a market order. — Arthur Levitt

Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity
technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light. — Ray Kurzweil

How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change. — Seneca.

It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals. — Alvin Toffler

I believe in a world in which science is the key for supporting the
development of a happy future for humanity. So, I advocate for such a
situation in which scientists would speak louder. If science is silent, there is no way to solve high priority problems at a global level, such as: the gap between developed and undeveloped countries, poverty, limited energy resources, limited food and even drinking water (especially related to the population growth phenomenon), global warming and rapid climate
changes, etc. — Eraldo Banovac

The enterprise that does not innovate ages and declines. And in a period of rapid change such as the present, the decline will be fast. — Peter Drucker

The world today is experiencing a profound and rapid socio-cultural transformation. But the changes do not occur at a uniform pace, and the discrepancies in the change process have differentiated the various countries and regions of our planet. — Gustavo Gutierrez

There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology , society , economy , and institutions . — Peter Drucker

The most rapid way to change a root thought, or sponsoring idea, is to reverse the thought-word-deed process. Do the deed that you want to have the new thought about. Then say the words that you want to have your new thought about. Do this often enough and you'll train the mind to think a new way. — Neale Donald Walsch

The locus of corporate innovations has been product development. But in times of rapid and unpredictable change, the creation of individual products becomes less important than the creation of a general organizational aptitude for innovation. — John Seely Brown

Very few, even among those who have taken the keenest interest in the progress of the revolution in natural knowledge set afoot by the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and who have watched, not without astonishment, the rapid and complete change which has been effected both inside and outside the boundaries of the scientific world in the attitude of men's minds towards the doctrines which are expounded in that great work, can have been prepared for the extraordinary manifestation of affectionate regard for the man, and of profound reverence for the philosopher, which followed the announcement, on Thursday last, of the death of Mr Darwin. — Thomas Henry Huxley

War always changes. Our enemies learn and adapt, and we must do the same or lose. But today, war is changing faster and on a larger scale than at any time in the last 350 years. Not only are we facing rapid change in how war is fought, we are facing radical changes in who fights and what they are fighting for. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents. This kind of war, which we call Fourth Generation war, or 4GW, is a very difficult challenge. — William S Lind

Private-equity and hedge-fund guys typically come into a situation of mediocrity, where rapid change may result in a profit. — Austin Ligon

Industries with rapid change are the enemy of the investor. Tech businesses, particularly biotech, is a problem from that point of view. All industries work with change, but you should ideally be investing in businesses with a low rate of change, not a high rate of change. — Mohnish Pabrai

[Francis of Assisi was one of the] signal figures who are catalysts for rapid change — Jon M. Sweeney

My grandfather was originally from the south of China before he emigrated to Malaysia pre-World War II. And I wanted to learn more about the history of the country of my ancestors. I knew I wanted a narrative set in contemporary Beijing. I was really interested in the effect of the rapid social and economic change on ordinary citizens in China. — Susan Barker

Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects ( ... ), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims. — Anthony Giddens

What I think we fear is rapid, pronounced, and uncontrollable changes to ourselves, and because of this we have a form of personality inertia - something that resists rapid change. — Simon Travaglia

The major novelty of my theory was its claim that the most rapid evolutionary change does not occur in widespread, populous species, as claimed by Most geneticists, but in small founder populations. — Ernst Mayr

As a nation, we are on a path of rapid and deep systemic change to our health system, and it's going to unfold for some time to come. It is already transforming the fundamental nature of the U.S. medical care delivery system. — John E. McDonough

If words lie face down there's a chance they might change during the night; you may suddenly come to see them with a new eye, perhaps with a rapid flash of insight. It is conceivable. — Tove Jansson

Change is more often a rapid transition between two stable states than a continuous transformation at slow and steady rates ... Change occurs in large leaps following a slow accumulation of stress that a system resists until it reaches the breaking point. Heat water, and it eventually boils. Oppress the workers more and more and bring on the revolution. — Stephen Jay Gould

It is a paradox that in our time of drastic rapid change, when the future is in our midst devouring the present before our eyes, we have never been less certain about what is ahead of us. — Eric Hoffer

We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side. — Charlie Munger

No one sets out to be the bad guy, you set out to change the world and heal the wounds of society. Until the day you realize just out deep those wounds go and that the only way to save the world is to put it down like a rapid dog. — Samuel Grace

Suddenly, she employed those very English weapons: devious good manners and a rapid change of subject. — Patricia Duncker

One reason that the task of inventing manners is so difficult is that etiquette is folk custom, and people have emotional ties to the forms of their youth. That is why there is such hostility between generations in times of rapid change; their manners being different, each feels affronted by the other, taking even the most surface choices for challenges. — Judith Martin

Thou canst remove out of the way many useless things among those which disturb thee, for they lie entirely in thy opinion; and thou wilt then gain for thyself ample space by comprehending the whole universe in thy mind, and by contemplating the eternity of time, and observing the rapid change of every several thing, how short is the time from birth to dissolution, and the illimitable time before birth as well as the equally boundless time after dissolution. All — Marcus Aurelius

It's unbelievable the primitive feelings that are aroused by rapid change. — Sheila Ballantyne

To make sense of a world in which rapid change and globalisation create genuine insecurity, we need benchmarks by which we can judge our actions and their long-term impact. — David Blunkett

For those who have only to obey, law is what the sovereign commands. For the sovereign, in the throes of deciding what he ought to command, this view of law is singularly empty of light and leading. In the dispersed sovereignty of modern states, and especially in times of rapid social change, law must look to the future as well as to history and precedent, and to what is possible and right as well as to what is actual. — William Ernest Hocking

Every day on a rapid change. If you find the exact point, you will survive or you will suffer — Thoughts

To live in modernity
an era contemporaneous with the triumph of the news
is to be constantly reminded that, thanks to science and technology, change and improvement are continuous and relentless. This is part of the reason we must keep checking the news in the first place: we might at any moment be informed of some extraordinary development that will fundamentally alter reality. Time is an arrow following a precarious, rapid and yet tantalizingly upward trajectory. — Alain De Botton

Change is the law of life and of relations between nations. When two great peoples such as ours, energetic and optimistic, live side by side in all the diversity that freedom offers, change is rapid and brings in its wake problems, sometimes frictions. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Writers brought up in Africa have many advantages - being at the center of a modern battlefield; part of a society in rapid, dramatic change. But in a long run it can also be a handicap: to wake up every morning with one's eyes on a fresh evidence of inhumanity; to be reminded twenty times a day of injustice, and always the same brand of it, can be limiting. — Doris Lessing

I'm extremely optimistic about rapid transformation and change of things in Africa in general. — Binyavanga Wainaina

An extremely effective instrument would be to put a price on carbon. It is only through the market that you can get a large enough and rapid enough response [to climate change] — Rajendra K. Pachauri

In a time of rapid change, standing still is the most dangerous course of action. — Brian Tracy

LUCAS LOOKED AT HIS WATCH: getting late. He walked down the hall, saw Shrake on the phone at his desk, went that way. Shrake saw him coming, held up a finger, said, "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, send me the paper. Okay. I gotta go." He hung up and said, "You're quivering." "You got some time?" "Ah . . . no. Not if you want me to keep pushing the Jackson thing," Shrake said. "All right. Where's Jenkins?" Lucas asked. "He's getting his oil changed," Shrake said. "He's . . ." "No, no, not that," Shrake said. "He was going down to a Rapid Oil Change, getting the oil changed in his car. — John Sandford

One of the most disturbing ways that climate change is already playing out is through what ecologists call "mismatch" or "mistiming." This is the process whereby warming causes animals to fall out of step with a critical food source, particularly at breeding times, when a failure to find enough food can lead to rapid population losses. — Naomi Klein

We live in an era when rapid change breeds fear, and fear too often congeals us into a rigidity which we mistake for stability. — Lynn Townsend White Jr.

The retreat of the Arctic sea ice, the warming of the oceans, the rapid shrinking of the glaciers, the redistribution of species, the thawing of the permafrost - these are all new phenomena. It is only in the last five or ten years that global warming has finally emerged from the background "noise" of climate variability. And even so, the changes that can be seen lag behind the changes that have been set in motion. The warming that has been observed so far is probably only about half the amount required to bring the planet back into energy balance. This means that even if carbon dioxide were to remain stable at today's levels, temperatures would still continue to rise, glaciers to melt, and weather patterns to change for decades to come. — Elizabeth Kolbert

In one century, we've added 28 years to our average life span - a change so rapid that our brains couldn't possibly have evolved to accommodate it. — Martha Beck

To my mind this makes psychedelics central to any political reconstruction, because these are the only force in nature that actually dissolve linguistics structures; lets the mechanics of syntax to be visible, allows the possibility for rapid introduction and spread of new concepts; gives permission for new ways of seeing; and this is what we have to do, we have to change our minds. — Terence McKenna

A culture must be reasonably stable, but it must also change, and it will presumably be strongest if it can avoid excessive respect for tradition and fear of novelty on the one hand and excessively rapid change on the other. — B.F. Skinner

JULY 20. I've just walked into the opera house. I have no programme. Strange new players are premiering a piece by a flamboyant new composer. Front and centre, three, maybe four, whales begin - a swelling string section - discordant, irresolute harmonies fill the concert hall. Then two more whales, stage right, come in, playing eight octave clarinets, counterpointing the string section. And then they, too, are counterpointed by occasional glissando slurs and passages played pizzicato by whales at the rear of the stage. But suddenly, a programme change: The orchestra members switch clothes and pull new instruments from their cases. The French horn players begin wailing on shiny, sleazy saxophones. The trumpeters spit rapid-fire bursts into an underwater echo chamber - the deep, rocky corridor of Johnstone Strait. — Erich Hoyt

The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot. — Arne Glimcher