Change is the one thing that everybody hollers for and longs for, but when it actually arrives, most people don't want it. It's a complex thing.

People are ready for change. They want to see workers paid a ; they want corporations and the to pay more tax; they want women workers to enjoy the same rights as men; they want a limit on the power and the wealth which sits in the hands of so few. They want action.

Many people want to change their life, but they are not will to change their choices, and ultimately this changes nothing.

People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same.

People want to change their lives. They want to change other people’s lives, too. They want to change the injustices they see. They want to change the whole damn world. But they do not want to change themselves. (Not their image. Not their appearance. Not their worldly success. Themselves.) Which is, as it turns out, the one thing they can change. The one thing that must change first.

When you really want to change, you just change. But most of us don’t really want to change — we don’t want to go through the pain just yet. At least recognize it, be aware of it, and give yourself a smaller change you can actually carry out.

People yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring.

Nature of the Desire for Change:

There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves. Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us. Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change. The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on. “If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even … he forthwith sets about reforming — the world.”

It is understandable that those who fail should incline to blame the world for their failure. The remarkable thing is that the successful, too, however much they pride themselves on their foresight, fortitude, thrift and other “sterling qualities,” are at bottom convinced that their success is the result of a fortuitous combination of circumstances. The self-confidence of even the consistently successful is never absolute. They are never sure that they know all the ingredients which go into the making of their success. The outside world seems to them a precariously balanced mechanism, and so long as it ticks in their favor they are afraid to tinker with it. Thus the resistance to change and the ardent desire for it spring from the same conviction, and the one can be as vehement as the other.

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

Most people fail in their desire for change because they lack the personal motivation or inspiration to maintain the discipline necessary to affect change in their lives.

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, and others make it happen.

When people say they don't want to change what they really mean is they don't have an incentive to change.

Change the incentives and the behavior follows suit.

If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people's lives are better, you know it's hard and some people think it's boring. Speeches like this are fun. Actually doing the work is hard. So people say, well, we need to change. She's been around a long time, she sure has, and she's sure been worth every single year she's put into making people's lives better.