Quotes about Change

As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.

Progress is not accomplished in one stage.

If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress, call it To-morrow.

People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.

Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognized: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.

And these things took place, and the kings resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old régime became the new régime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth changed place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer's day, a shepherd said to a Prussian in the forest, "Go this way, and not that!

But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling.

The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love.

As long as there are misérables there will be a cloud on the horizon that can become a phantom and a phantom that can become Marat.

Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age. During this journey in 1825

Revolution cannot really be conquered... If you wish to understand what Revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to understand what Progress is, call it Tomorrow. Tomorrow performs its work irresistibly, and it does it from today.

The galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please.