Change Quotes

I have long understood that climate change is not only an environmental issue - it is a humanitarian, economic, health, and justice issue as well.

~ Frances Beinecke

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

~ William Hague

On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.

~ Geoff Mulgan

On almost every environmental issue I care about, in fact, I've been wrong at one point or another. I used to think that climate change was no big deal, that most environmental problems were massive exaggerations, that oil reserves were effectively unlimited, and more.

~ Ramez Naam

Like the other great revolutions, an environmental revolution will require sacrifices and lead to enormous gains. It, too, will change the face of the land and human institutions, hierarchies, self-definitions, cultures. It will take centuries. If it happens. There is no guarantee, of course.

~ Donella Meadows

Truly, we do live on a 'water planet.' For us, water is that critical issue that we need. It's the most precious substance on the planet, and it links us to pretty much every environmental issue, including climate change, that we're facing.

~ Philippe Cousteau

Climate change is not a discrete issue; it's a symptom of larger problems. Fundamentally, our society as currently designed has no future. We're chewing up the planet so fast, in so many different ways, that we could solve the climate problem tomorrow and still find that environmental collapse is imminent.

~ Alex Steffen

We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for people have been the cold periods rather than the warm periods.

~ Freeman Dyson

Politics colours everything, and anyone who wants change is necessarily political. As an environmental campaigner more or less since I left school in the early '90s, I have always been involved in lobbying, campaigning and pushing for changes.

~ Zac Goldsmith

At the same time the folk boom was happening, the civil rights movement was happening, the anti-war movement was happening, the ban the bomb movement was happening, the environmental movement was happening. There was suddenly a generation ready to change the course of history.

~ Arlo Guthrie

Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

~ Vaclav Klaus

Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.

~ Michael E. Mann

An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.

~ Dean Kamen

The most distinguished hallmark of the American society is and always has been change.

~ Eric Sevareid

Music moves society more than most people realize. In my opinion, it's a soft manipulator of influence and change.

~ Kim Harrison

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity's small change in general society.

~ Charles Dickens

I don't think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.

~ William Hague

The idea that we are going to be able to take our entire society as it currently works and simply change the source of energy and make it sustainable is not actually congruent with reality.

~ Alex Steffen

Unlike national legal systems, there are precious few avenues to address judicial activism at the WTO. You pretty much have to gain consensus to change the agreements, or simply withdraw from the system. The first is nearly impossible, and the second would be - in the view of many - cataclysmic.

~ Robert Lighthizer

Women are emerging as a major force for change. Countries that have invested in girls' education and removed legal barriers that prevent women from achieving their potential are now seeing the benefits.

~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

The Safari Club International has worked the legal system hard to try to keep polar bears - threatened primarily by climate change, but also by hunting - on the list of creatures people can import as trophies after shooting.

~ Lydia Millet

Strictly speaking, my interest is not in legal rights for animals but in a change of heart towards animals.

~ J. M. Coetzee

The Supreme Court has in place a legal structure which protects abortion rights in this country, and something has got to be done to change that before we can put in place truly meaningful protection for the unborn.

~ Charles T. Canady

A new book by 'New York Times' reporter Charlie Savage, 'Power Wars,' suggests that there has been little substantive difference between George W. Bush's administration and Obama's when it comes to national-security policies or the legal justifications used to pursue regime change in the Greater Middle East.

~ Greg Grandin

The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.

~ Muhammad Yunus

Most of what needs to be changed in the euro zone can be done without treaty changes. The demand for treaty change is as political as it is legal and I don't think it's going to happen soon.

~ Nick Clegg

So many times I've heard people say that the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples won't really change anything other than some legal and financial stuff. It's a dumb argument: those legal and financial effects matter.

~ Alice Dreger

I never thought I would live long enough to see the legal profession change to the extent it has.

~ Constance Baker Motley

All of my life I have stayed away from violence and the instruments of violence, and have seen a legal, democratic struggle as the only means to achieve change.

~ Osman Baydemir

One of the most common reasons people renovate their homes is a change in their lifestyle - an upcoming wedding, a new baby, or grown children moving away.

~ Candice Olson

Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us - more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.

~ Joyce Meyer

I swear I will do everything in my power to change the situation in Tibet where human rights are being suppressed. Tibet seeks freedom and democracy and we agree on those values.

~ Shinzo Abe

I hear music that comes out of need, out of grief, sorrow, suffering and out of overcoming these things, as well. That journey to freedom still goes on today. It's an incremental change, the culmination of many events in your own life and the lives of your children and grandchildren.

~ Kathleen Battle

We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it's only us. And we're only responsible to make ourselves happy.

~ Tom Brady

Principles are the most important thing to me. One of the things I think my dad taught me was there are people who accept the world they live in and there are people who change the world they live in. I don't accept my circumstances.

~ Ken Buck

I learned from my dad that change and experimentation are constants and important. You have to keep trying new things.

~ S. Robson Walton

It was my dad's idea to change my name from Sahatciu to Ora. He said it would be easier to pronounce.

~ Rita Ora

My dad always said, 'Don't worry what people think, because you can't change it.'

~ Daisy Donovan

Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone's day.

~ Douglas Conant

I deeply believe that if the Australian Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men. Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.

~ Kevin Rudd