Dee Hock Quotes

#1. Right is not this or that doctrine or opinion; right is rational discussion about shared experience between honorable people leading to mutual understanding and tolerance.

Dee Hock

#2. Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.

Dee Hock

#3. Adam was the first man, Eve the first woman, Satan the first consultant, and God the first entrepreneur.

Dee Hock

#4. If you think you can't, why think

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#5. The greatest writers have no purpose but to incite in the minds of each reader the highest and best thought of which they are capable.

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#6. The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.

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#7. If you're in such a position of power and your ego is such that this is not possible, then its essential to have a small cadre of very bright, committed people who are questioning, exploring and understanding these emerging concepts.

Dee Hock

#8. Great achievements would be few and far between without gross overestimation of the advantages and pleasures to be expected from them.

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#9. Much of that which passes for conversation these days is the lobbing of small bombs of dogma and little clots of banality at one another.

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#10. With the advent of genetic engineering the time required for the evolution of new species may literally collapse.

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#11. Far better than a precise plan is a clear sense of direction and compelling beliefs. And that lies within you. The question is, how do you evoke it?

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#12. No one can teach us the joy of living; we are endowed with it. So why are we continually waiting for the lecture?

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#13. Nature is infinite innovation and beauty that never repeats itself. Only man-made artifacts are endlessly repetitious, which is a principal reason our lives are so boring, full of anxiety and devoid of meaning.

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#14. As I like to say, the entire collective memory of the species - that means all known and recorded information - is going to be just a few keystrokes away in a matter of years.

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#15. All organizations are merely conceptual embodiments of a very old, very basic idea - the idea of community. They can be no more or less than the sum of the beliefs of the people drawn to them; of their character, judgements, acts and efforts.

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#16. Community is composed of that which we don't attempt to measure, for which we keep no record and ask no recompense. Most are things we cannot measure no matter how hard we try.

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#17. Only an unimaginative man would think that mechanistic, command-and-control organizations could ever produce an equitable, enduring, free society. Only a thoughtless man would create them. Only an arrogant man would run them. Only a cruel man would perpetuate them.

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#18. What we call originality is no more than ignorance of antecedents.

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#19. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

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#20. Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

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#21. If we pay great attention to the meaning of each moment of our unique life, the meaning of life in general will attend to itself.

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#22. For every difficult destination, there are thousands who stand aside and point the way for each one with courage and capacity to go before and show the way. The former are managers; the latter are leaders.

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#23. Education that gives priority to measurement rather than values, to efficiency rather than conscience, to information rather than ethics, provides no barrier to barbarity and violence. The Holocaust was perpetrated by a society of the most disciplined, highly educated people on earth.

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#24. Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping

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#25. Only fools worship their tools

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#26. If a plethora of learning with a paucity of teaching is an approach to heaven and a plethora of teaching with a paucity of learning an approach to hell, the devil is hard at work in our educational systems.

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#27. The disgruntled are abundant among those who are idle, and to be idle is a matter of choice.

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#28. It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.

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#29. The closest thing to a law of nature in business is that form has an affinity for expense, while substance has an affinity for income.

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#30. We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and transmit data - the lowest cognitive form - has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.

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#31. Children are easily taught, for they readily accept and believe lies told by their elders.

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#32. Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes.

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#33. One of the more fascinating things about human behavior is the degree to which we conceive of countless boundaries that constrain and inhibit us in extraordinary ways, even though they are nothing but mental constructs that, in reality, do not exist.

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#34. We never fully understand what we have been told until we experience it. Learning not embedded in experience is forever crippled. Unfortunately, our present society is schooled, not educated.

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#35. Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.

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#36. The most common lesson of history is that the butchery of one mass of people by another is, in the minds of the butchers, sanctioned by their god.

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#37. It is impossible to conceive of idea apart from life. Every living thing has an idea of life, and every idea must have a living thing in which to arise.

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#38. It is common to learn from experience what we already believe, then repeat the experience to prove what we believe we learned. The process was invented by religion and perfected by science.

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#39. Accomplishment is one part commitment, one part ability, one part persistence, and one part circumstance. Circumstance we cannot control. The rest we might.

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#40. An illustration I use to get people to understand it is this: I'll ask major corporate audiences: Why don't you just take all your traditional beliefs about organizations, and apply them to the neurons in your brain?

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#41. The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.

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#42. Just as bad money drives out good, the broad, deep, inclusive renaissance mind is being driven out by the narrow, specialized, technical mind.

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#43. Religion claims we must obey the mandates of God and clergy can tell us what they are. Science claims we must obey the laws of nature and scientists can tell us what they are. Both claims are absurdly pretentious.

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#44. The prudent course is to make an investment in learning, testing and understanding, determine how the new concepts compare to how you now operate and thoughtfully determine how they apply to what you want to achieve in the future.

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#45. Life will never surrender its secrets to a yardstick.

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#46. Great thought, great achievement, and great love have this in common: all involve great risk.

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#47. One of the more curious facts about human beings is that they can spend a day of introspection without discovering what is obvious to anyone who has spent a half hour in their company.

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#48. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

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#49. It is not making better people of others that management is about. It's about making a better person of self. Income, power, and titles have nothing to do with that.

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#50. If Satan were twins, one the Republican nominee for president, the other the nominee of the Democrats, and God ran as an independent, can there be any doubt who would come in last?

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#51. What is a question but a moment of discontent in pursuit of understanding? What is an answer but a moment of illusion in our flight from ignorance?

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#52. Intent is in the composer, interpretation is in the conductor, rendering is in the instrumentalist, perception is in the listener, sound is in the notes, and rhythm is in the intervals. Music is the harmonious relationship between them all. Relationship is beauty.

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#53. Knowledge is never in doubt. Wisdom is never certain.

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#54. An organization's success has more to do with clarity of shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability or management competence, important as they may be.

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#55. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.

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#56. If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.

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#57. There is nothing that dictates behavior more than what we want others to think of us. When that happens, we become a reflection in our own mind of what we believe is reflected in the mind of another, neither of which has the slightest chance of being correct. Talk about dogs chasing tails.

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#58. Reality cannot be captured by language - not even the language of mathematics - since all language, by its very nature, is man-made, self-referent ambiguity.

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#59. Nothing can be more violent and merciless than a group of true believers, no matter what they choose to believe.

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#60. Do not get angry, stubborn, and imperious. Get curious.

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#61. Of this we can be certain: at no time, in no place, and in no way is anything in the universe separate, independent, or unrelated.

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#62. Certainty is the place where questions go to die.

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#63. Don't preach. Don't teach. Don't judge. Take a loved child by the hand and explore something fascinating together.

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#64. Life is so uncertain that it is far better and more joyous to play your way through it than to plan or pray your way through it.

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#65. Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.

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#66. The ultimate profanity is to invoke any deity in support of death or destruction in any form, particularly war.

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#67. If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.

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#68. What will become compellingly important is absolute clarity of shared purpose and set of principles of conduct sort of institutional genetic code that every member of the organization understands in a common way, and with deep conviction.

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#69. The ultimate insanity is to so organize society that power, wealth, and information are concentrated in the hands of so few people that they have the power, for whatever reason, to put to death our species and the living earth as well. But so we have.

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#70. It won't do away with hierarchy totally, but the principal leader will be the person who most exemplifies the kind of organization and behavior required who is best able to create the conditions such organizations require.

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#71. There is nothing at which government is more adept or diligent than relieving people of their money.

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#72. Given the right circumstances, from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things

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#73. An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.

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#74. Throughout history, it took centuries for the habits of one culture to materially affect another. Now, that which becomes popular in one country can sweep through others within months.

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#75. Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality.

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#76. If you go back to the first single-cell form of life, it clearly possessed the capacity to receive, to utilize, to store, to transform, and to transmit information.

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#77. Particularity and separability are infirmities of the mind, not characteristics of the universe.

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#78. The most abundant, least used, and most abused resource in the world is human spirit and ingenuity.

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#79. Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever.
Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.

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#80. We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born.

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#81. You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again.

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#82. Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.

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#83. The relational aspect of all things is the music that sets life and the universe dancing.

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#84. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture.

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#85. Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral.

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