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What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.

What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.

Approximate author period: c. 1919 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Hermann Hesse
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1919 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1877 to 1962; Wikidata Q25973, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q25973 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 88542; supplied attribution, independently unverified

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.