Notable Quotes

From astute observers of the human condition.

We've scattered quotes through the various segments of this workshop. You can find them assembled here all in one page, along with some others that we've added because they seem to us to be especially applicable as we contemplate the current condition of the planet and the global problems humanity has created.

The insights from these thinkers can help enlighten our path as we figure out what to do next.

Don Beck

It's time to stop predicting rain and start building the Ark.

General Omar Bradley

Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it... Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Abraham Maslow

The ultimate disease of our time is valuelessness. This state is more crucially dangerous than ever before in history.

Steven M Wolinsky, MD

Our descendents may recall the latter half of the twentieth century as a lull in the gathering storm.

Albert Schweizer

Man can hardly recognize the devils of his own creation.

Will Durant

Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.

 

Laurie Garrett

Not all progress is achieved in a deliberate, sagacious manner. Indeed, much simply springs from catastrophe as disasters give birth to long-neglected or serendipitous change.

Thomas Homer-Dixon

The past century's countless incremental changes in our societies around the planet have accumulated to create a qualitatively new world. Because these changes have accumulated slowly, it's often hard to recognize how profound and sweeping they've been. When we look back from the year 2100, I fear we will see a period when our creations - technological, social and ecological - outstripped our understanding and we lost control of our destiny.

Henri Bertoft

The part is a place for the presencing of the whole.

W. H. Auden

We must love one another or die.

Joseph Jaworski

When all is said and done, the only change that will make a difference is the transformation of the human heart.

Ed Harris

We all accept reality as it is presented to us.

Bill Dillon

When you think you have the answer, you've lost the capacity to listen.

Don Beck

Put your hands on your knees. Notice when they jerk.

Arie de Geus

The signals of threat are always abundant and recognized by many [inside an institution.] Yet somehow they fail to penetrate the corporate immune system response to reject the unfamiliar.

 

George Bernard Shaw

Though the Life Force supplies us with its own purpose, it has no other brains to work with than those it has painfully and imperfectly evolved in our heads.

Jorge Luis Borges

Everything touches everything.

Albert-László Barabási

We are close to knowing just about everything there is to know about the pieces of the universe, but we are as far as we have ever been from understanding nature as a whole.

Saroeum Phoung

The human species is a young species. We really have no idea what the human being can really do.

Victor Hugo

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

George Bernard Shaw

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose you consider a mighty one, the being a force of nature rather than a feverish, selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

John White

Once people see clearly their heart's intent, their focus becomes like a laser.

Will Ackerman

If you know what's right, you don't have to make decisions. When you know what's right, it's just there for you, and you do it.

Debashish Chatterjee

You cannot do great things. You can only do small things with great love.

Mahatma Gandhi

We must be the change we seek to create.

Bert Hellinger

The criterion for what is good is based on whether it relieves someone, brings joy, or soothes a distress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before you move on, you may enjoy reading our personal favorite quotes that we have posted on our website.

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