Quotes about Change

Health and life, I would say, in the full and final sense of those words, are not what we die out of, but what we die into

Dependence, sorrow, repentance, a longing to change—these are the gates to God's kingdom.

Does prayer change God or change me?

We whine about things we have little control over; we lament what we believe ought to be changed.

Change came from below, as it usually does, rather than being imposed from above.

We must continually ask ourselves: Is our first aim to change our government or to see lives in and out of government changed for Christ?

Western powers have learned a related and painful lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan: change imposed by force rarely produces the desired results. Likewise, a faith that matters grows best from the ground up, working its way through society gradually, without coercion.

What counts is the way a person reacts in the face of suffering. That is the real test of the person: What is our personal attitude to life and its changes and chances?

Breaking the cycle of ungrace means taking the initiative.

Unfortunately, most of my secular friends would agree with Bill Gates, who considers religion a waste of time: "There's a lot more I could be doing on Sunday morning," he told an interviewer. They view the church not as a change agent that can affect all of society but as a place where like-minded people go to feel better about themselves.

King clung to nonviolence because he profoundly believed that only a movement based on love could keep the oppressed from becoming a mirror image of their oppressors. He wanted to change the hearts of the white people, yes, but in a way that did not in the process harden the hearts of the blacks he was leading toward freedom. Nonviolence, he believed, 'will save the Negro from seeking to substitute one tyranny for another.

Rather than looking back nostalgically on a time when Christians wielded more power, I suggest another approach: that we regard ourselves as subversives operating within the broader culture.