Inner Change Quotes

Being stuck serves a spiritual purpose. It's a bountiful harvest for transformation to occur. It tells us that a change is needed. More than any type of outward change, what's really being asked of us is an inner change. It could be a change of heart, change of priorities, a change of beliefs, or even a change of perspective. ~ Dana Arcuri

We aren't born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am.
Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

In life, the only thing of importance is a radical, total, and definitive change. The rest, frankly, is of no importance at all. ~ Samael Aun Weor

To bring about the new takes not just a development of the old, but a radical leap forward - revolutionary and transforming - and that requires extra factors that were not present before. ~ Belsebuub

Do not think the world will become better in terms of our own inner change. We should rather think we'll achieve this goal only, and only if, we rescue the fact that the ultimate treasure lies at the end of our most positive creative deeds. ~ Francisco Leon

In order to change the world, you must first change yourself. In order to have the right to see what is wrong with the world, you must first earn that right through seeing what is wrong with yourself. We do not become influencers, leaders and teachers, through pulling on our better attributes and applying those better attributes to a broken world like a healing balm; rather, we become influencers, leaders and teachers in this world, by performing within ourselves the purging that we wish to see take place in others. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change. ~ Martin Buber

No one can give you that which you can find within yourself. ~ Belsebuub

The inner change, justification, is effected at the moment of salvation. The outer change in the believer's daily walk, sanctification, continues throughout life. But the progressive work of sanctification is only fully effective when the radical, inner transformation of justification is realized and appropriated by faith. ~ Neil T. Anderson

For spiritual change, we need to see and understand ourselves. What sees is consciousness, it is what perceives, and is essentially what we are. To understand ourselves we need to look within and study how we think and feel, and doing that is called self-observation. ~ Belsebuub

The criminal (as slave) often seeks a person of great perfection (and here, as a judge of people's imperfection, the criminal is much harsher than a good man), because he so wants to obtain trust from outside (not through an inner change of mind). If he believes he has found such a person, he gives himself up to him in the most complete slavery, and he searches in an importunate manner for people whom he could serve as a slave. He also wants to live as a slave so as never to be alone. ~ Otto Weininger

Without inner change there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters. ~ Angel Kyodo Williams

Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well. ~ Jurgen Moltmann

Whenever we decide to create a greater degree of change in our lives we need to start doing things differently.
Any external change only reflects the inner transformation. Hence whenever we decide to change our lives, it does not happen through manipulation of the external reality. Any external change is a pure reflection of the inner change. We must change our perceptions, beliefs, feelings, thoughts, the way we talk and express ourselves, in order to see a significant change in our realities. It is all it takes. ~ Raphael Zernoff

Indeed, living a spiritual life requires a change of heart, a conversion. Such a conversion may be marked by a sudden inner change, or it can take place through a long, quiet process of transformation. But it always involves an inner experience of oneness. We realize that we are in the center, and that from there all that is and all that takes place can be seen and understood as part of the mystery of God's life with us. Our conflicts and pains, our tasks and promises, our families and friends, our activities and projects, our hopes and aspirations, no longer appear to us as a fatiguing variety of things which we can barely keep together, but rather as affirmations and revelations of the new life of the Spirit in us. "All these other things," which so occupied and preoccupied us, now come as gifts or challenges that strengthen and deepen the new life which we have discovered. This does not mean that the spiritual life makes things easier or takes our struggles and pains away. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31 ~ Thomas Merton

The way to develop inner peace through meditation begins with the recognition that the destroyer of inner peace is not some external foe, but is within us. Therefore, the solution is within us too. However, that inner change does not take place immediately in the way that we switch on a light, but takes weeks, months and years. ~ Dalai Lama

Outer changes always begin with an inner change of attitude. ~ Albert Einstein

As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking. ~ Richard Powers

All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Too many of us spend too much time worrying about how long we are going to live rather than focusing on how we live. People cannot live forever, but memories can. Remember that with every breath and your life will change. ~ Tanya Masse

You can't change the past. You can only change the future. ~ Amanda Grace

Q. How many docents does it take to change a lightbulb?
A. Two. One to remove the old lightbulb and the other to tell the story behind it. ~ Ron Brackin

The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day. Total freedom from change would imply total freedom from error; but this is the prerogative of Omniscience alone. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

When you go to Detroit you see a town that is resilient, that's just fighting to win again, and there's an energy to that. Just watching a city really fighting to get back on its feet and watching the inner strength of a city is tremendous. ~ George Clooney

Absolutely nobody in the entire United States of America has even a modicum of interest in who I am, but I'm determined to change that. Because if I can pull it off here, then I can kiss goodbye to tedious speeches, crappy TV jobs and all the other nonsense I have to do back in England to pay the bills. ~ Piers Morgan

There is no mono-we; there are many usses. The usses change and interleave. ~ Amal El-Mohtar

The religious stories, the religious truths, the spiritual principles - obviously, they don't change. But as you get older and you experience more, you recognize the applicability, the profundity, and the fundamental truths of spiritual principles in ways that you couldn't when you simply were living a less dimensional life. ~ Marianne Williamson

suddenly i pin you to the wall and the tenderness is gone my kisses change as do my eyes and my voice and my urgency ~ P.D. Bates

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
[Kung Fu Monkey
Ephemera, blog post, March 19, 2009] ~ John Rogers

Fathers were supposed to be invulnerable - but that attitude was childish, he now saw. Irritatingly, he might have to change his outlook. He could no longer be merely indignant and resentful. He was not the only sufferer. Dad had hurt him, but he had hurt Dad as well, and they were both responsible. Feeling responsible was not as comfortable as feeling outraged. ~ Ken Follett

There is no logical necessity for the conclusion that the change cannot begin at all because its perfection is not immediately possible. ~ Sri Aurobindo

If you want to change the quality of your life, then you must change the quality of your thoughts. ~ Susan Kapatoes

The laws you see today are a direct consequence of economic illiteracy in the general population. If every voter learned economics tonight, the laws would change tomorrow. ~ Ben Mathew

Before this I tended to paint figures and put them in an environment. Now I paint an environment to put figures in. It's a subtle difference, but it is a difference. It's something I did naturally ... ~ John Newman

For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change. ~ Mike McCurry

Take your Inner Being everywhere you go. If you take your Inner Being to the party, it's going to be a good party! If you take your Inner Being, the food that you eat will be received perfectly by the cells of your body. Every word that comes out of your mouth will be beneficial to everyone who hears them with their ears - or with their vibration. Don't go anywhere without your Inner Being. That's what "Allowing" is. Always having your Inner Being present. And then, anything else that happens is always orchestrated perfectly by Law of Attraction. ~ Esther Hicks

When I get the strength to leave, you always tell me that you need me. And I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love you. So I stop and think that maybe you could learn to appreciate me, and it all remains the same that you ain't never gonna change. ~ Ashanti

My blog readership grew steadily as I started to dump more of my inner self onto the page. I ~ Amanda Palmer

As we get older, we demand stories that go somewhere. Things must change. ~ Dave Morris

Bea felt a pang in her gut: Yes, she wanted to scream, I want this more than you could possibly imagine. But the idea of saying that out loud [...] felt terrifying. Like giving voice to this secret piece of herself would allow everyone in the world to tell her just how foolish she was for wanting something so laughably out of reach. ~ Kate Stayman-London

Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

But I think it's more that when you're young, you're invincible, you're immortal - or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless, you're inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It's fixed. You can't change anything. I find that a bit disturbing, to be honest. ~ Damien Hirst

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. ~ George Santayana

In an age of social media and content being key, it's important to change the mold where you have $100,000 to $150,000 for one video. I hired some guys that are young, just out of college, and we used some new, far-less-expensive cameras and technology to make videos. ~ Ronnie Dunn

The most rigid pattern was not the one imposed by the school system or the adolescent social system. It was the pattern I made of the people around me, a mythology for their incomprehensible activity, a mythology that brought me a cramped delight, which I protected by putting all possible space between myself and other people. the boundaries of my inner world did not extend out, but in, so that there was a large area of blank whiteness starting at my most external self and expanding inward until it reached the tiny inner province of dazzling color and activity that it safeguarded. ~ Mary Gaitskill

With my personality, I generally don't like change a lot. I reflect back on things quicker than I should at times. So it seems like it's gone by really quick. The older you get, the faster it seems to go by. ~ Matt Kenseth

Well, and what if we give in to our troubles at every step! We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man's spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes? As for our wants, they are many and unfilled, for who is so rich or compassionate as to supply them? Want is our companion from birth to death, familiar as the seasons or the earth, varying only in degree. What profit to bewail that which has always been and cannot change? ~ Kamala Markandaya

There aren't many now who leave from the same world they were born into. Not here, not anywhere on earth as far as I can tell or know; the simplest and most unchanging of human societies have been shattered in the last hundred years, people flung into centrifuges of change and loss, that there comes to be nothing at last to say good-bye to. I was leaving the world, but it was not my world I was leaving ~ John Crowley