IdeaBank : Free Samples : Change

Change—samples from our database

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a [Mississippi River] pilot a man has got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know, and the other was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) (1835-1910)
American writer and humorist
in Life on the Mississippi

Keywords: business, change, education, executive, experience, flexible, humor, joke, knowledge, learning curve, management, navigation, new on the job, newcomer, response, retraining, technology, time, wisdom, wise

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.

Garrett Hardin (1915- )
American biologist
writing in the February, 1974 issue of Fortune

Keywords: change, complexity, consequences, easy fix, experimentation, future impact, innovation, planning, problem solving, reorganization, research, science, unexpected results, unforeseen

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

Technology is like a steamroller. If you are not on the steamroller, then you are destined to become part of the road.

Keywords: change, humor, joke, progress

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

The only person who likes change is a wet baby.

Anonymous

Keywords: employee, humor, joke, morale, new ideas, reorganization, resistance to change, transformation

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

[About the changing times:] A great wind is blowing and that gives you either imagination or a headache.

Catherine II ("The Great") (1729-1796)
Empress of Russia
Correspondence with Baron F.M. Grimm

Keywords: adversity, challenge, change, difficult, entrepreneurial, excitement, future, government, new developments, obstacle, opportunity, politics, revolution, risk, social, trouble, unrest

From the Humor file of IdeaBank

Two cavemen were huddled close to their fire. Outside it was raining and sleeting, thundering and lightning.

One of the cavemen turned to the other and said, "You know, we never had this crazy weather before they started using bows and arrows."

Keywords: change, engineering, science, technology

From the Quotations file of IdeaBank

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today,—"Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood."—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American essayist, poet and philosopher
"Self-Reliance,"
Essay, First Series, 1841

Keywords: experience, grow, growth, inconsistent, learn, open to change