you can do it

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately in love with suffering.-- Dostoevsky

I guess it's hard for people who are so used to things the way they are - even if they're bad - to change. 'Cause they kind of give up. And when they do, everybody kind of loses. --Pay it Forward

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. --Abraham Lincoln

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. --Alan Cohen

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. --Anais Nin

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. --Anais Nin

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. --Anais Nin

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. --Charles Dubois

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

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. --M. Scott Peck

It's not so much that we're afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in between that we fear . . . . It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to. --Marilyn Ferguson

All things change; nothing perishes. --Ovid

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. --Tom Robbins

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

"Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up." --James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die. --Auden

Most of our assumptions have outlived their uselessness. --Marshall McLuhan

What is required for effective change is continuity of sincere effort to release and let go of inefficient thought patterns from the past. --Doc Childre and Howard Martin

It is never too late to become what you might have been. --George Eliot

Many people make fun of me because Pay it Forward is my favorite movie. But in this movie is the greatest truth: people are so afraid of changing, and if we only stay in our comfortable "manageable" (according to Eugene) lives, then everyone loses.
Don't tell me you're not afraid of change. Everyone is afraid of change. Even the liberals crying for economic reform are afraid of changing the things in their hearts. I myself am terrified of it.
We grow laterally and we employ methods that keep us alive and make us feel safe. It takes years, but we conform completely to these things. We may consider the possibility that there is something more out there, but we are too afraid to leave our safety and grasp for something we don't entirely believe in.

I'm only seventeen, so I guess you could disregard everything I'm saying. I am saying it completely aware of my hypocrisy as well; I won't deny my aversion to and fear of change. But let me tell you- we don't not have the live our lives the way we are living them. We can have more, be more. It may scare us to death, but I'd rather die trying. We can never give up and be satisfied with things that are no longer good enough. We have to move on. There is safety in the moving. There is safety in the end.

You can do it.