Is The Only Thing Constant, Change?

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Alfred North Whitehead:
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Arthur Schopenhauer:
Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Charles Darwin:
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

George Bernard Shaw:
Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?"

Henri Bergson:
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

William Shakespeare:
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Woodrow Wilson:
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

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This morning I got up and looked for my favorite hiking shirt before remembering it was stolen last Wednesday in Vancouver, BC, along with some other gear.
Bummer!
I really liked that shirt, shabby as it had become.
It will be hard to find a replacement that I will like as much.
And a replacement will also cost something.

But, finding replacements is part of life.
We expect to have to replace things because they do not last forever, although some are very durable.
And, we may see something else with more modern features that appeals to us.
Even so, the comfort and familiarity of an old garment that you have gone places with and enjoyed will take some getting used to.

It will not be difficult for me to find a replacement life style to serving on the Council.
But, in some respects I will miss it.
I doubt it will take people very long to become accustomed to dealing with other elected representatives either.
Likely, it will be more difficult for them to deal with the change they will experience in lifestyle.

Regardless of needing replacements at times, there are some things that ought not to change much.
Things like focusing on priorities that are necessary and for which funding and resources must be provided.
Or, like being as transparent as possible in dealing with every issue, whether it is viewed as a challenge or an opportunity.
And, like setting up a 'big tent', then inviting people of every persuasion inside to contribute their ideas, concerns and energy to the public process.

None of those things are really easy to do, although each does sound simple enough.
We often hear the phrase 'The Only Thing Constant Is Change', but is it?
Do the needs and expectations of people really change that much?
How about the values that endure?

I'm willing to concede that change is a big fact of life.
We have to deal with it the best we can.
But, I'm also convinced that there are also some things that don't change, despite perceptions to the contrary.
How to balance change with permanence is a feat difficult to even comprehend, isn't it?
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More Quotes-

Abraham Lincoln:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Albert Einstein:
Technological change is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

Alvin Toffler:
In describing today's accelerating changes, the media fire blips of unrelated information at us. Experts bury us under mountains of narrowly specialized monographs. Popular forecasters present lists of unrelated trends, without any model to show us their interconnections or the forces likely to reverse them. As a result, change itself comes to be seen as anarchic, even lunatic.

Andy Warhol:
They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

Charles Kettering:
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

Emily Dickinson:
All but Death, can be Adjusted—
Dynasties repaired—
Systems—settled in their Sockets—
Citadels—dissolved—

Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors
By Succeeding Springs—
Death—unto itself—Exception—
Is exempt from Change—

Eric Hoffer:
In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Felix Adler:
We cannot adopt the way of living that was satisfactory a hundred years ago. The world in which we live has changed, and we must change with it.

Georg C. Lichtenberg:
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

Henry David Thoreau:
Things do not change, we change.

Heraclitus:
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in. ca. 500 BCE

Heraklietos of Ephesos:
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.

Irene Peter:
Just because everything is different doesn't mean that everything has changed.

John F. Kennedy:
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

Leo Tolstoy:
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

M. Scott Peck:
The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Marian Wright Edelman:
If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it one step at a time.

Nelson Mandela:
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Ovid:
All things change; nothing perishes.

Pablo Picasso:
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Pearl S. Buck:
I am comforted by life's stability, by earth's unchangeableness. What has seemed new and frightening assumes its place in the unfolding of knowledge. It is good to know our universe. What is new is only new to us.

Peter F. Drucker:
Society, community, family are all conserving institutions. They try to maintain stability, and to prevent, or at least to slow down, change. But the organization of the post-capitalist society of organizations is a destabilizer. Because its function is to put knowledge to work -- on tools, processes, and products; on work; on knowledge itself -- it must be organized for constant change.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Life is a progress, and not a station.

Robert F. Kennedy:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Robert Frost:
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favor.

Thomas Jefferson:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Unknown:
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.

Washington Irving:
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.

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