Edwin H. Friedman Quotes

#1. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them.

Edwin H. Friedman

#2. The function of a leader within any institution: to provide that regulation through his or her non-anxious, self-defined presence.

Edwin H. Friedman

#3. But no one has ever gone from slavery to freedom with the slaveholders cheering them on, nor contributed significantly to the evolution of our species by working a forty-hour week, nor achieved any significant accomplishment by taking refuge in cynicism.

Edwin H. Friedman

#4. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

Edwin H. Friedman

#5. Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.

Edwin H. Friedman

#6. The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change.

Edwin H. Friedman

#7. A major criterion for judging the anxiety level of any society is the loss of its capacity to be playful.

Edwin H. Friedman