Quotes About Systems Change

#1. The technology is the independent variable, the social system the dependent variable. Social, systems are therefore determined by systems of technology; as the latter change, so do the former.

Leslie White

#2. The idea is that human culture as broadly defined
art, politics, technology, religion, and so on
evolves in much the way biological species evolve: new cultural traits arise and may flourish or perish, and as a result whole institutions can belief systems form and change.

Robert Wright

#3. My background is putting in large systems that change lives ... The right kind of systems can bring honesty and efficiency.

Nandan Nilekani

#4. Frankly, [the definition of woman] is a problem that the lesbians do not have because of a change of perspective. 'Woman' has meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual, economic systems. Lesbians are not women.

Monique Wittig

#5. All living things must grow or they will die. Adaptation to change is a characteristic of all living systems. Thus, all living things must grow, adapt, evolve, or die. Evolution is nature's creative way of pushing living organisms to higher degrees of complexity. We adapt up, not compromise down.

Alvin Conway

#6. Put simply, if we do not redirect our extraction and production systems and change the way we distribute, consume, and dispose of our stuff-what I sometimes call the take-make-waste model-the economy as it is will kill the planet.

Annie Leonard

#7. Nature is not static, but causes its own, internally-generated changes - both in climate and in biological systems.

Roy Spencer

#8. It's all a risk. Always. That's not true, actually. The only exception: it's a certainty that there's risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That's because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.

Seth Godin

#9. Systems, whether educational or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves.

Krishnamurti

#10. If you have a sense of the rates of change of stocks, you don't expect things to happen faster than they can happen. You don't give up too soon.

Donella H. Meadows

#11. For systems in which you already have a lot of hardware and software, change is difficult. That's why apps are so popular.

Vint Cerf

#12. The problem is so severe that trying to say, "First we'll fix the government and then we'll tackle climate change," or, "First we have to figure out alternative systems to capitalism and then we'll tackle climate change," I don't see how those things are possible in the very short term.

Margaret D. Klein

#13. We need to build change in to our systems and let these systems evolve as circumstances change. Change is inevitable, but we need to do a better job of dealing with it, because when we start building huge gleaming monoliths, I think we start getting into trouble.

Daniel Suarez

#14. Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.

W. Edwards Deming

#15. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.

Michael Crichton

#16. It is always easier to destroy a complex system than to selectively alter it.

Roby James

#17. Healthy forests and wetlands stand sentry against the dangers of climate change, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and locking it away in plants, root systems and soil.

Frances Beinecke

#18. There are ways to pursue political change. In a democracy, it's through the ballot box. There are other ways, and many democracies have many different systems of democracy.

Richard Armitage

#19. Government systems suffer from two weaknesses. They are complex. And they are slow. We need to change this. Our systems need to be made sharp, effective, fast and flexible. This requires simplification of processes and having trust in citizens. This needs a Policy Driven State.

Narendra Modi

#20. I have never come across a technology that doesn't change. This is inevitable. You have to adapt your systems as technology develops.

Gijs De Vries

#21. To do what you imply would require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not systems.

Rafael Sabatini

#22. As one individual changes, the system changes.

Ram Dass

#23. Breath control training will change your body and mind in remarkably positive ways. It will tune your nervous system and allow you to activate the parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous systems at will, helping you to perform in a stressful environment or to excel in competition.

Mark Divine

#24. We have minds that are equipped for certainty, linearity and short-term decisions, that must instead make long-term decisions in a non-linear, probabilistic world.

Paul Gibbons

#25. We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously.

Grace Lee Boggs

#26. Hell yeah! Twitter was proof that leaderless self-organizing systems could be true agents of change.

Biz Stone

#27. There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.

Bill Gates

#28. Strategy, role-model, systems thinking, trust, relationship management, balance, etc., are all important culture change principles.

Pearl Zhu

#29. We need to change our habits of thought, belief, and doing as well as change our systems. Each level reinforces the other: Our habits and beliefs form the psychic substructure of our system, which in turn induces in us the corresponding beliefs and habits.

Charles Eisenstein

#30. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change

Frank Herbert

#31. All things change, creeds and philosophies and outward systems - but God remains.

Mary Augusta Ward

#32. Opportunities change, strategies change, but people and psychology do not change. If trend-following systems don't work well, something else will. There's always money being lost, so someone out there has to win.

Gil Blake

#33. We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems ... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.

John Allen Paulos

#34. The central challenge for educational systems around the world is the substitution of effectiveness for popularity.

Douglas B. Reeves

#35. Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of carrots and sticks.

Paul Gibbons

#36. Startups are rapidly changing systems. If you use an annual review cycle, you aren't getting feedback at the same pace that you need to adapt and change the business.

Fred Wilson

#37. When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them. Before

Adam M. Grant

#38. There's no way to design a society that's optimal or utopian. It's better than the one that was. Systems always undergo change.

Jacque Fresco

#39. Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work - whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty - is the great task of our generation as a whole.

Atul Gawande

#40. From the systems point of view, it is evident that one of the main obstacles to organizational change is the - largely unconscious - embrace by business leaders of the mechanistic approach to management.

Fritjof Capra

#41. The only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that.

John Perkins

#42. Established systems are inherently hostile to change.

Newt Gingrich

#43. External circumstances will not change until internal belief systems change.

Myles Munroe

#44. A few key terms that frame the dynamics of complexity theory will be a starting point for further study and further reflection on how complexity theory can increase our awareness of organizational dynamics and the nested systems of change that constitute life and change.

Milton Friesen

#45. We're facing enormous changes in our planetary life, with climate change and the adaptations that all natural systems are going to have to make to these climate changes, and so it's extremely important to bear witness to what's happening.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

#46. Geoengineering involves humans making intentional, large-scale modifications to the Earths geophysical systems in order to change the environment.

Jamais Cascio

#47. Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future.

Paul Hawken

#48. Systems don't change easily. Systems try to maintain themselves, and seek equilibrium. To change a system, you need to shake it up, disrupt the equilibrium. That often requires conflict.

Starhawk

#49. In the broadest sense, evolution is merely change, and so is all-pervasive; galaxies, languages, and political systems all evolve. Biological evolution ... is change in the properties of populations of organisms that transcend the lifetime of a single individual.

Douglas J. Futuyma

#50. Seen politically, systems follow one another, each consuming the previous one. They live on ever-bequeathed and ever-disappointed hope, which never entirely fades. Its spark is all that survives, as it eats its way along the blasting fuse. For this spark, history is merely an occasion, never a goal.

Ernst Junger

#51. To me, there's so much talent in the world that's locked out for the wrong reasons, whether it's innovators at the highest end where we need to change the regulation systems, or whether it's the talented people who work here who the bureaucracy's holding back, or the amazing American people.

Megan Smith

#52. Don't damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don't change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information.

Julian Assange

#53. Society in general maintains such a vested interested in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die - or kill - than entertain change. Consider how threatened religious fundamentalists of all faiths remain to this day by science in general and Darwin in particular.

Tom Robbins

#54. We must now view our problems as opportunities - historic opportunities to change the failed systems of the past and do what's right for our future.

Bob Riley

#55. Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.

Adam M. Grant

#56. It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life; any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones.

Carl Sagan

#57. If we want to change the systems we are part of - our countries, communities, organizations, and families - we must also see and change ourselves

Adam Kahane

#58. There's nothing that the United States can do. Nothing that would change systems in the Middle East, nothing the United States can do that would make the Middle East a better place.

Jeffrey Goldberg

#59. Our civilization is facing a radical, imminent mass change. The alternative to the hierarchical power structure is based on mutual aid and group consensus. As hackers we can learn these systems, manipulate these systems, and shut down these systems if we need to.

Jeremy Hammond

#60. At age 14, my belief systems began to change about myself, about God, about humans, about values, and about moral standards. I also began to align myself with the principles that are laid down by the Creator in the book called the Bible.

Myles Munroe

#61. Tokenism does not change stereotypes of social systems but works to preserve them, since it dulls the revolutionary impulse.

Mary Daly

#62. Although science is not easy in complex human systems, we cannot afford to throw our hands in the air and give up. It may take decades, but it is a game worth playing and winning.

Paul Gibbons