For 25 years countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

America makes prodigious mistakes, America has colossal faults, but one thing cannot be denied: America is always on the move. She may be going to Hell, of course, but at least she isn’t standing still.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

I never come back home with the same moral character I went out with; something or other becomes unsettled where I had achieved internal peace; some one or other of the things I had put to flight reappears on the scene.

Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

When we see the face of a child, we think of the future. We think of their dreams about what they might become, and what they might accomplish.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Without forgiveness, there’s no future.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Human nature is not totally fixed, but on any realistic scale, evolutionary processes are much too slow to affect it.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

Nothing endures but change.

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

If you’re teaching today what you were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead or you are.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I haven’t had that one great love, which is good. I don’t want that to be in the past – I want it to be in the future.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.