Change from Within Quotes

Play within the system. Be a decision maker.

When I left government, it appeared I could get some rather unusual things done from the inside.

We have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

In an interview with Univision, President Obama said if there's one thing he's learned, it's that you can't change Washington from within. So what is he saying - that if we want real change, we should throw him out?

There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.

To bring about a fundamental, radical revolution, we must begin with ourselves.

Many people asked me to convert. I said my religious convictions remain. I am fighting the wrongs within my own community. And if I decide to convert I will lose the right to fight.

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

You can't reorder any society from outside. You can help from within.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.

If you put one model in a show or in an ad campaign, that doesn't solve the problem. We need teachers in universities. We need internships. We need people of different ethnic backgrounds in all parts of the industry. That really is the solution: you have to change it from the inside.

If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system.That's much more powerful than rebelling outside the system.

Many original occupiers believe the political system has become so corrupt that even participating in it, engaging with it, corrupts the movement. I understand what they are saying. But often, change does come more quickly from the inside rather than the outside. My advice: try both. But don't try violence.