It’s vital to remember that you can’t change others unless they want to change themselves. You can influence them and facilitate change, but you can’t make them change. And they’ll only decide to change when they have an incentive – such as a better life or a better relationship with you. If they don’t identify a problem with their way of being, they won’t be motivated to change.

Change happens because of individuals who team up with others or inspire others. And soon you’ve got 10 or 100 or 1,000, and then you’ve got a movement.

If you do the right thing, eventually you will inspire others to do the right thing.

I’m sure you’ve heard that you can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

People can resist change at times, but change is important if you want to go forward.

people change only when they feel they don’t have to. There’s a healthy (and effective) way to help your partner move in the direction of positive change. But it starts with who they want to be, not who you want them to be.

There is no greater force for change than people inspired to live a better life.

When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.

“A man is what he thinks about all day long.” [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
Aldous Huxley

Those who are able to inspire will create a following of people—supporters, voters, customers, workers—who act for the good of the whole not because they have to, but because they want to.

Let us initiate a change in ourselves, for then, and then only, shall we be able to effect a change in other people. When we change, others change too. And circumstances change in a manner that is almost miraculous. The initial change has to come from inside ourselves.

When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.

Many times, people will tell you it is impossible, it can’t be done, you are too small or too inconsequential to make change happen. Look them in the face and show them just how to do it.

We know that progress can always be reversed, and that positive change is achieved not through passion alone, but through patient and persistent effort. But we’ve seen things change for the better in this region and around the world because of the effort of ordinary people, together -- working together.

The best way, perhaps the only way, to change others is to become an example.