Change Quotes

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” is credited to Margaret Mead and marked disputed. No source from her own time is known. Ralph Keyes, in The Quote Verifier (2006), uses it as an example of how this happens: later books cite each other, and nobody knows where it started.

The sourced entries are more reliable. Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach (1845): “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” Lampedusa, in Il Gattopardo (1958): “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Alvin Toffler, in Future Shock (1970), went further: change is not merely necessary to life, it is life.