Adapt & Advance Quotes
The strongest do not survive change; the most adaptable do. The man who adjusts his sails keeps advancing while everyone else fights the wind. This Resilience path holds history's wisest quotes on adapting without losing direction. Scroll through and put them to work.
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“Change is inevitable - embrace it or get left behind.”
“Iteration is the fundamental basis of all improvement.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“In order to have you must do, and in order to do you must be.”
“It is no good getting furious if you get stuck. What I do is keep thinking about the problem but work on something else.”
“It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.”
“Instead of thinking of the problem, be the answer.”
“Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”
“Everything negative is an opportunity for me to rise.”
“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.”
“A friend in power is a friend lost.”
“The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.”
“Cut short your losses; let your profits run on.”
“As a CEO, I am finding that I have to become a learning CEO. I have to go to school all the time because I am learning new skills that I need to run this company. I have to constantly renew my skills.”
“Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way. Stay away from what might have been and look at what can be.”
“The man who views the world at 50 the same he did at 20 has wasted thirty years of his life.”
“Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don't belong.”
“You must have a level of discontent to feel the urge to want to grow.”
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
“We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.”
“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”
“To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time”
“The greatest thing about tomorrow is, I will be better than I am today. There is no such thing as a setback. The lessons I learn today I will apply tomorrow, and I will be better.”
“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”
“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”
“Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.”
“Quitting on time will usually feel like quitting too early.”
“Life is not holding a good hand; life is playing a poor hand well.”
“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
“The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.”
“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a new way to stand.”
“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.”
“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.”
“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
“Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.”
“Change is the end result of all true learning.”
“I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.”
“They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.”
“In a world of constant change, the only sustainable advantage is the ability to learn faster than the competition.”
“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.”
“'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared.”
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”
“Build a company that can adapt to change.”
“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”
“You renew yourself every day. Sometimes you're successful, sometimes you're not, but it's the average that counts.”
“Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster”
“Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.”
“Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature's delight.”
“Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.”
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.”
“What got you here won't get you there.”
“If you're not embarrassed by last week's work, you're not learning fast enough.”
“The most dangerous phrase in the language is, 'We've always done it this way.'”
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”
“Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away”
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.”
“You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain.”
“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”
“No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you've come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.”
“Permit yourself to change your mind when something is no longer working for you.”
“You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.”
“I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about.”
“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing, that we see too late the one that is open.”
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
“Change may not always bring growth, but there is no growth without change.”
“The species that survive are usually not the smartest or strongest, but the ones most responsive to change.”
“Dig your well before you're thirsty.”
“Live each day as if your life had just begun.”
“A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.”
“We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.”
“There is nothing permanent except change.”
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.”
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”
“To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.”
“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic.”
“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
“Excellent firms don't believe in excellence - only in constant improvement and constant change.”
“When there is a crisis, that's when some are interested in getting out and that's when we are interested in getting in”
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”
“If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that weigh you down.”
“Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.”
“I deeply believe that everything happens for us, not to us, and if we can take all parts of our journey, the good and the bad, with the same hunger for knowledge and willingness to dissect what worked and what didn't, then all of it will be a blessing in the end.”
“If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”
“There is no better personal development tool than running your own business.”
“Retreat does not come quickly to the brightest people, yet strategic retreat, sacrifice, and deciding what to give up are at the core of success”
“In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.”
“It is never too late to be wise.”
“Learn from the past, prepare for the future, live in the present.”
“Every problem is an opportunity to grow, and advance towards your full potential.”
“If you believe you can change and start changing your habits, the change becomes real.”
“If the plan doesn't work, change the plan but never the goal.”
“Things do not change. We change.”
“Yesterday's home runs don't win today's games.”
“Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.”
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.”
“Obstacles are simply opportunities for advancement.”
“All rising to a great place is by a winding stair.”
“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.”
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
“Learn. Ceaselessly. Learn to code, to write persuasively, to understand new technologies, to bring out the best in your team, to find underused resources and to spot patterns.”
“If Plan A fails, remember you have 25 letters left.”
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
“If you don't change, you can become extinct.”
“I want to grow. I want to be better. You grow. We all grow. We're made to grow. You either evolve, or you disappear.”
“The only way that we can live is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change.”
“Negative people present us with an accelerated personal growth opportunity.”
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.”
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
“Everything is affected by and is part of everything else, changing constantly from one state to another. The rain becomes the river; the river surrenders to the sea and the cycle begins over again. Nothing is ever lost. The melody changes - the dance goes on.”
“The more you adapt, the more interesting you are.”
“Learning is not a spectator sport.”
“One cannot step twice in the same river.”
“You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.”
“Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.”
“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.”
“You can't just keep doing what works one time; everything around you is always changing. To succeed, stay out in front of that change”
“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
“It is more fun when you choose to change rather than have it imposed on you.”
“Storms make trees take deeper roots.”
“The important thing is that we must be constantly moving forward, the progressive realization of a predetermined goal. And our growth should never end.”
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
“The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening think what can be done better tomorrow.”
“Accept the pain of the past. Learn the lessons of the past. Embrace the nostalgic memories of the past. Then dream big dreams of the future and start chasing them!”
“The ability to learn is not fixed. It can change with your effort.”
“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.”
“You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.”
“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.”
“Progress is impossible without change and those that cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
“Resilience is the ability to attack while running away.”
“You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
“A full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.”
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
“There are two ways of meeting difficulties: You alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.”
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.”
“The key to change is to let go of fear.”
“You can't do today's jobs with yesterday's methods and be in business tomorrow”
“When one door closes, sometimes we need to turn the knob to open another.”
“If you are not where you want to be, do not quit. Instead reinvent yourself and change your habits.”
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
“When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.”
“Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.”
“What's dangerous is not to evolve”
“You've got to continue to grow, or you're just like last night's cornbread, stale and dry.”
“Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.”
“Most people die when they're 25 but aren't buried until they're 75.”
