Quotes by American Authors - Page 192

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums and those in cemeteries.
Everett M. Dirksen
Only fools and dead men don't change their minds. Fools won't. Dead men can't.
John H. Patterson
When people are least sure they are often most dogmatic.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It's the most unhappy people who most fear change.
Mignon McLaughlin
A stiff attitude is one of the phenomena of rigor mortis.
Henry S. Haskins
If in the last few years you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one check your pulse. You may be dead.
Gelett Burgess
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one.
William H. Seward
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell Lowell
Nothing should be permanent except struggle with the dark side within ourselves.
Shirley Maclaine
The only man who can't change his mind is a man who hasn't got one.
Edward Noyes Westcott
People who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be "consistent."
Oliver Wendell Holmes
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. ... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again though it contradicts everything you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency and a virtue and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency and a vice.
Mark Twain
Consistency is a paste jewel that only cheap men cherish.
William Allen White
True consistency that of the prudent and the wise is to act in conformity with circumstances and not to act always the same way under a change of circumstances.
John C. Calhoun
The world is quite right. It does not have to be consistent.
Charlotte P. Gilman
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson
He that never changes his opinions and never corrects his mistakes will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
Tyron Edwards
I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be new views.
Abraham Lincoln
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself (I am large I contain multitudes).
Walt Whitman
It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
Luther Burbank
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
William James
The world does not have to change.... The only thing that has to change is our attitude.
Gerald Jampolsky
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
Brooks Atkinson
You had better be ready to change your mind when needed or your mind will change you.
Henry B. Wilson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I wish to say what I think and feel today with the proviso that tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are chameleons and our partialities and prejudices change place with an easy and blessed facility.
Mark Twain
They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were they all fused into a single stubbornness.
Louise Erdrich
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
Mark Twain
You had better be ready to change your mind when needed.
Henry B. Wilson
Security can only be achieved through constant change through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
William O. Douglas
To some will come a time when change itself is beauty if not heaven.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.
Learned Hand
All change is not growth as all movement is not forward.
Ellen Glasgow
Have no fear of change as such and on the other hand no liking for it merely for its own sake.
Robert Moses
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Heroes take journeys confront dragons and discover the treasure of their true selves.
Carol Pearson
My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.
Helen Gurley Brown
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams
Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.
Carlos Castañeda
It is only an error in judgement to make a mistake but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.
Christian Bovee
Duration is not a test of true or false.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
How does one become a butterfly? she asked pensively. "You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."
Trina Paulus
Compromise if not the spice of life is its solidity.
Phyllis McGinley
This Mouse must give up one of his Mouse ways of seeing things in order that he may grow.
Hyemeyohsts Storm
One must lose one's life in order to find it.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
When patterns are broken new worlds emerge.
Tuli Kupferberg
We must learn to view change as a natural phenomenon-to anticipate it and to plan for it. The future is ours to channel in the direction we want to go ... we must continually ask ourselves "What will happen if ... ?" or better still "How can we make it happen?"
Lisa Taylor
Changes are not predictable but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one's own unnecessary vegetation.
Gail Sheehy
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change nor even to profit by it but to cause it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
After you've done a thing the same way for two years look it over carefully. After five years look at it with suspicion. And after ten years throw it away and start all over.
Alfred Edward Perlman
The reality is that changes are coming. ... They must come. You must share in bringing them.
John Hersey
I never saw a Purple Cow I never hope to see one: But I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one.
Gelett Burgess
Since the general civilization of mankind I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison
... That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom.
Abraham Lincoln
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and under a just God cannot long retain it.
Abraham Lincoln
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me As He died to make men holy let us die to make men free While God is marching on.
Julia Ward Howe
For what avail the plough or sail Or land or life if freedom fail?
Ralph Waldo Emerson