Change Quotes

“To see truth as truth, we don't need a lot of study. It's not complicated. What we need is pure observation. An open mind and fresh eyes will serve us well.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Change is the very nature of Nature. if there's one thing that doesn't change, it is the fact that everything changes. In the Korean tradition of Tao, this is called impermanence. The teaching about impermanence can be summarized like this: Anything that has a beginning must have an end. Anything that is created will change. Impermanence is the very nature of things. Realizing that nothing is permanent is the true beginning of enlightenment. Suffering comes from attachment that wants to hold something permanently that is not permanent in its intrinsic nature. Awakening to the truth of impermanence frees you from attachment.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Truth is truth, not the explanations of Truth. Truth is a living, moving process. Truth is constantly undulating and vibrating. You can become one with the Truth, but you cannot adequately explain it.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“At this time in history, sick, afraid, and despondent are the general conditions that affect the majority of poeple almost everywhere. It's difficult and challenging to follow the call of conscience when we're under the dark veil of these forces. At the same time, it's painful not to follow it.

When you become healthy, courageous, and hopeful, following your conscience becomes easier. When people are healthy, courageous, and hopeful, it's difficult to bend their mind and will. You can't force them to do what you'd like them to do against their will. They will speak out what they believe, and stand up and do what is right even when it means a loss to them.

I am hopeful because I have witnessed this change throughout my life. From the realization of what I really am, I became hopeful, courageous, and passionate for life, and I felt responsible for the general condition of humanity and the Earth because they are not separate from me.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Even when we have realized oneness and nothingness, we still have our personal lives to manage, bodies to take care of, and mouths to feed, and you will know which one is yours and which ones are others', so you won't put food into another person's mouth when you are hungry. Also you won't kiss a rattlesnake or hug a cactus no matter how strong an affinity you feel toward them. But at the same time, we know these apparent separations are functional, not fundamental, and should be recognized as such without mistaking one for the other. I would call this apparent separation "functional ego," or you can call it your "character," which is the collection of your beliefs, habits, and other people's expectations.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“We have the Noble Desire to help others and benefit the world, without expecting any return or recognition. What makes us great is not our knowledge, skill, money, or power. What makes us great is not our knowledge, skill, money, or power. What makes us truly great is this noble desire, this passion that transcends all separation, goes beyond one's limitations, and wants to hug others and embrace the whole world. This is not something that we need to learn, because we already have it. It just needs to be acknowledged and awakened.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“There is a serious discrepancy between what we really wants, and what we usually do to get what we think we want. What we really want is to fill the hole inside and become complete, and what we do is look for success and growth outside.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“. . . if you close your eyes and begin to feel your breath, it will instantly become deeper and slower, and your mind will become calmer. Then gradually you'll become aware of your body, or more precisely the subtle sense of energy inside and around your body. At that moment, you exist as Energy-Consciousness, not as names, jobs, duties, roles, desires, and so on.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“I believe in the goodness of fellow human beings. We have a true desire for greatness and genuine good intention to be helpful to others. That's enough. Change is possible.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Change,connectivity,and learning to live well with others and with Nature and her ways will be the features of the world when seen through the eye of Tao.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“If a change in our lives require individually or socially painful sacrifices, it will be difficult to put into effect no matter how necessary that change might be. However, if we start down the road of transformation with simple, enjoyable, and tangible changes, we will soon be prepared to tackle larger issues.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“When you find the absolute values, you are important to this world because you know what is important. Those who know what is truly important are helpful to this world, because they won't put their personal concerns before what is important to all.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“By acknowledging and accepting the ultimate commonality, we can naturally and voluntarily develop the attitude of compassion and benevolence toward other people, other life-forms, and all beings. We will want to live for the good of all because we know that's the way we benefit ourselves, too.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“When we stop dreaming and believing in our dream, we stop being human.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“It's a wonderful paradox: only when you have a changeless sense of who you are, can real changes take place. It is the ground of your absolute value and everything that is truly worthwhile.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Earth as the standard by which to judge all actions transacted on our planet. From such a point of view, we all are Earth Citizens before we are a part of any group, nation, or religion. The Earth is the source of life for all forms of life. It is the common ground and primary value we pursue in our lives personally and collectively!”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Ultimately, it isn't your knowledge that makes the choice: it is your values and your will to be faithful to your values.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“The choice is to live a spiritual life; to live a bigger life; to live a life of service to Earth and the whole; it's choosing every day and every hour to live by your true nature at all levels of being rather than live as an individual person only on the material dimension of being.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Change your energy! Be genuinely positive. Have kind energy before you say kind words or do kind gestures. Affect other people positively.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“. . . when you are stressed, if you take three deep breaths before you say or do anything, this will help prevent you from making choices you might regret later.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“...we can choose to be truthful even when the choice means personal loss. We can choose to undertake a great action - unselfish, courageous, daringly creative - that looks unreasonable and irrational to the eye of the Ego.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Nothing is the universe's great storehouse and power plant. Laws give the universe order and stability, while possibilities give the universe dynamic creativity and change. Through the balance of these, the universe maintains its eternal dynamic harmony that provides all beings with the environment in which they can realize their potential value.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“We need to change our way of seeing the world and relating to it, not because our current way is intrinsically bad or "evil," but because we have become too powerful to continue to live as we have been living. Whether we like it or not, collectively we have become the most powerful factor in determining not only the future of human society, but also the direction of the entire planet with all its life-forms.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Behind our behaviors are our beliefs. They determine how we think things are and what is possible. The foundation of these beliefs is our conception of who we are, whether we are conscious of it or not.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Thoughts become things through action. The most powerful tool for creating changes in your life is attention and action. No action means no creation.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Absolute values are the things that are important whether you like them or not. Relative values depend on social contexts and personal preferences and conditions of life. Our current market system pursues relative transient values at the cost of absolute lasting values.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“If people begin to use the full power of conscience in all the choices they make in their everyday life, from presidential elections to purchasing things in the grocery store, the world will change.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Recognizing Nothing as one's true nature, following the guidance of our conscience - having a clear distinction between absolute and relative values, and using the Earth as the external absolute scale that matches the internal absolute truthfulness.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“We have a true desire for greatness and genuine good intention to be helpful to others. That's enough. Change is possible”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential

“Becoming an Earth Citizen means that you are breaking out of a self-imposed idea of who you are and embracing the broader reality of who you truly are.”
― Ilchi Lee, Change: Realizing Your Greatest Potential