"If your life changes, we can change the world, too"
About this Quote
The subtext is classic Ono: intimate, disarmingly simple, and quietly accusatory. If you’re waiting for the revolution to arrive like a package, you’re part of the delay. She collapses the scale difference between inner life and public life, not by pretending they’re the same, but by arguing they’re wired together. Your relationships, your attention span, your willingness to be odd in public, your capacity to imagine alternatives - these are political resources. A changed life produces changed behavior; changed behavior, at mass, becomes culture; culture becomes policy. That’s the chain she’s compressing into one sentence.
Context sharpens it. Ono emerged from Fluxus and conceptual art, where instructions and small gestures were the artwork, and from late-60s peace activism, where spectacle and sincerity had to coexist. The phrase echoes the ethos of her “instruction pieces” and “Imagine”-era idealism: not naive, but strategic. It’s a call to stop outsourcing agency, delivered in the soft voice of someone who knows softness can be a form of force.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ono, Yoko. (n.d.). If your life changes, we can change the world, too. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-your-life-changes-we-can-change-the-world-too-3864/
Chicago Style
Ono, Yoko. "If your life changes, we can change the world, too." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-your-life-changes-we-can-change-the-world-too-3864/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If your life changes, we can change the world, too." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-your-life-changes-we-can-change-the-world-too-3864/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.








