Quotes About Systems Thinking

#1. Systems thinking is "contextual," which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.

Fritjof Capra

#2. Strategic Thinking = Systems Thinking + Creativity + Vision

Pearl Zhu

#3. With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics , the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications
systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.

Fritjof Capra

#4. Systems thinking is a state of mind. Once you have this state of mind, you realize how each part of your business flows into the other.

Lisa A. Mininni

#5. Before the 1940s the terms "system" and "systems thinking" had been used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a major scientific movement

Fritjof Capra

#6. Holistic Thinking is a combination of analysis, Systems Thinking, and Critical Thinking

Pearl Zhu

#7. [ ... ] vision without systems thinking ends up painting lovely pictures of the future with no deep understanding of the forces that must be mastered to move from here to there.

Peter M. Senge

#8. In Systems Thinking, the true wisdom often comes from a willingness to let go of past learning.

Pearl Zhu

#9. In a broader sense, Systems Thinking is a path to greater awareness.

Pearl Zhu

#10. A terrific, stimulating book ... Ramalingam clearly and engagingly shows how the use of complex adaptive systems thinking can significantly strengthen and enhance the impacts and effectiveness of global foreign aid.

Jerry Sabloff

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

Pearl Zhu

#12. Design is a form of competitive advantage. People tend to think of design as good art, good visual language, which it absolutely has to be. But it's also about the ability to do systems thinking.

James P Hackett

#13. In systems thinking, increases in understanding are believed to be obtainable by expanding the systems to be understood, not by reducing them to their elements. Understanding proceeds from the whole to its parts, not from the parts to the whole as knowledge does.

Russell L. Ackoff

#14. Systems Thinking provides the more holistic way to view the problems

Pearl Zhu

#15. As we get older, a lot of societies, education systems and workplaces make us feel that playing is a waste of time. We end up suppressing stupidly brilliant questions for what we think are more serious responsibilities.

Jessica Walsh

#16. Too many people confuse real magic with magical thinking. Real magic isn't a trick and it transforms our lives. Magical thinking is denial.
Real magic is what happens when we break old belief patterns and have the courage to employ the native laws of the Universe

Jacob Nordby

#17. I think there are some things ... that may even be distorted in the practice, such as some affirmative action programs becoming quota systems. And I'm old enough to remember when quotas existed in the United States for the purpose of discrimination, and I don't want to see that happen again.

Ronald Reagan

#18. One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.

Marissa Mayer

#19. Throughout the living world, we find living systems nesting within other living systems.

Fritjof Capra

#20. While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Chris Matthews

#21. If you're not working to get your business or investing operation to operate without you, you're thinking too small. Think team and systems.

Robert Kiyosaki

#22. I think there [are] great economies that can be made starting with a round of base closings, ... I want the president to veto these pork-barrel spending bills which have grown to incredible obscene levels. I believe there are a number of weapons systems that have to be eliminated.

John McCain

#23. Look, I can surely say by now that I've got the antibodies to communism inside me. But when I think of consumer society, with all its tragedies, I wonder which of the two systems is better.

Pope John Paul II

#24. I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.

Don DeLillo

#25. But I think there is a widespread opinion that the support system for athletes should be more firmly established.

Shinzo Abe

#26. The notion that better engineering can solve all our problems is rooted in an ignorance of non-linear systems and selective/wishful thinking.

Charles Hugh Smith

#27. No piecemeal solution is going to prevent the collapse of whole societies and ecosystems ... a radical re-thinking of our values, priorities and political systems is urgent.

Maude Barlow

#28. The human mind moves always forward, alters its viewpoint and enlarges its thought substance, and the effect of these changes is to render past systems of thinking obsolete or, when they are preserved, to extend, to modify and subtly or visibly to alter their value.

Sri Aurobindo

#29. We imagine "pure" cybernetic systems, but we can prove only that we know how to build fairly dysfunctional ones. We kid ourselves when we think we understand something, even a computer, merely because we can model or digitize it.

Jaron Lanier

#30. Philanthropy is often seen as society's risk capital. That means the onus is on philanthropists, nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs to innovate. But philanthropic innovation is not just about creating something new. It also means applying new thinking to old problems, processes and systems.

Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

#31. I think that anybody who thinks science is going to explain everything in biological systems, or in physical cosmology, et cetera, is actually mistaken, because I think within science - if correctly understood - those claims are not being made.

George Coyne

#32. Those are all computational engines that are highly distributed and therefore highly robust, .. We're seeing a very significant evolution in the way we even think about computer systems, let alone specific applications.

Vinton Cerf

#33. I think buildings should imitate ecological systems. Ecological systems in nature before we had human beings interfere with them exist in a state of stasis - they are self-supporting, self-sustaining.

Ken Yeang

#34. I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time.

Timothy Leary

#35. our architects need to shift their thinking away from creating the perfect end product, and instead focus on helping create a framework in which the right systems can emerge, and continue to grow as we learn more.

Sam Newman

#36. I don't think it's a lack of will. I think it's an issue of what people view as constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment, number one, and what customers and business partners expect around the world from secure computing systems. And it's a difference of view.

Rod Beckstrom

#37. Rating systems work perfectly for players who play only in round robin closed events. I think most of them are overrated. Organizers invite same people over and over because they have the same rating and their rating stays high.

Alexander Khalifman

#38. I think that life is a paradox and you have to embrace that in your work and your belief systems ... You can't be a literalist, and that's the trouble that people always find themselves in. That's why people always hit a wall with any of my stuff, because you can't take it literally.

Madonna Ciccone

#39. I don't think that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism can be resolved by war. This is no longer the age of the bow and arrow. It's the nuclear age, and war can annihilate us all. The only way to achieve solutions seems to be for the different social systems to coexist.

Fidel Castro

#40. The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

Saul Williams

#41. Many countries have food safety systems from farm to table. Everybody involved in the food supply is required to follow standard food safety procedures. You would think that everyone involved with food would not want people to get sick from it.

Marion Nestle

#42. Attempts to control complex systems by using the kind of mechanical, reductionist thinking championed by thinkers from Newton to Taylor - breaking everything down into component parts, or optimizing individual elements - tend to be pointless at best or destructive at worst.

Stanley McChrystal

#43. As I think all Americans understand on both sides of the aisle, the Social Security system as it is structured today is a pay-as-you-go system.

John Shadegg

#44. If we seek solace in the prisons of the distant past
Security in human systems we're told will always always last
Emotions are the sail and blind faith is the mast
Without the breath of real freedom we're getting nowhere fast.
(History Will Teach Us Nothing)

Sting

#45. 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

#46. I have a beautiful wife and a wonderful support system and I think in those low moments, I could never thank them enough.

Sean Mackin

#47. Cyber Command is supposed to be defending our critical infrastructure at home, but they are spending so much time looking at how to attack networks, how to break systems, and how to turn things off. I don't think it adds up as representing a defensive team.

Edward Snowden

#48. [ ... ] most of the problems faced by humankind concerns [concerned] our inability to grasp and manage the increasingly complex systems of our world.

Peter M. Senge

#49. I hate government. I hate power. I think that man's existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.

Malcolm Muggeridge

#50. Viewed abstractly, systems analysis implies rigorous thinking, hopefully quantitative, regarding the gains and the resource-expenditures involved in a particular course of action -- to insure that scarce resources are employed productively rather than wastefully.

James R. Schlesinger

#51. I do think that it is legitimate to talk of goals and functions in nature, and that these things can be made sense of in naturalistic terms. There is nothing at all contrary to naturalism in the idea of goal-directed systems.

Hilary Kornblith

#52. I think humankind is going to have to evolve into systems that are more transparent. Then people will be able to make more integral choices about the food they eat.

Billy Corgan

#53. This thing called Contrmporary America--and its obsession with televisions, game systems, and computers_has gone a littlr far if you ask me. Some call it the Information Age, but I'd tend to say it's more the Sitting-on-one's-butt-and-letting-other-people-do-the-thinking-for-you Age.

James Patterson

#54. I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life.

Ian Bremmer

#55. 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

#56. Systems Thinkers shape a worldview based on the realization of interconnectedness.

Pearl Zhu

#57. Businesspeople are not used to thinking about closed systems;economists are.

Paul Krugman

#58. For me, the concept of design is more than object-oriented; it encompasses the design of processes, systems and institutions as well. Increasingly, we need to think about designing the types of institutions we need to get things done in this rapidly accelerating world.

John Seely Brown

#59. What was the self-sacrifice?" I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes." Why was that self-sacrifice?" Because they were mine!" said Ford, crossly. I think we have different value systems." Well mine's better.

Douglas Adams

#60. Most people wish to be consoled, confirmed. They want their prejudices reinforced and their structured belief systems validated. After all, it hurts to think, and it's absolute agony to think twice.

Jennifer Stone

#61. I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.

Frans De Waal

#62. We can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth's people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely doable.

Lester R. Brown