Dee Hock – Reflections of a Restless Mind

Sean

3 years ago

Dee Hock is the Founder and former CEO of Visa

Today, Visa consists of 19,000 financial institutions operating in 240 countries and territories, with 2.5 billion cardholders making 80 billion transactions totaling $8.5 trillion annually.

This is one of Dee Hock’s favorite tricks to play on an audience. “How many of you recognize this?” he asks, holding out his own Visa card.

Every hand in the room goes up.

“Now,” Hock says, “how many of you can tell me who owns it, where it’s headquartered, how it’s governed, or where to buy shares?”

Confused silence. No one has the slightest idea, because no one has ever thought about it.

And that, says Hock, is exactly how it ought to be. “The better an organization is, the less obvious it is,” he says. “In Visa, we tried to create an invisible organization and keep it that way. It’s the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent.” Today the Visa organization that Hock founded is not only performing brilliantly, it is also almost mythic, one of only two examples that experts regularly cite to illustrate how the dynamic principles of chaos theory can be applied to business.

Dee Hock

Chaordic Organization = synthesis of chaos and order. Encourage as much competition and initiative as possible throughout the organization — “chaos” — while building in mechanisms for cooperation — “order.” By chaord, I mean any self-organizing, self governing, adaptive, nonlinear, complex organism, organization, community or system, whether physical, biological or social, the behavior of which harmoniously blends characteristics of both chaos and order.
Loosely translated to business, it can be thought of as an organization that harmoniously blends characteristics of competition and cooperation; or from the perspective of education, an organization that seamlessly blends theoretical and experiential learning. As I learned from the formation and operation of Visa, an early archetype of such organizations, they require a much different consciousness about the leader/follower dichotomy.

Principles: distributed power, diversity and ingenuity

Philosophy: highly decentralized and highly collaborative. Authority, initiative, decision making, wealth — everything possible is pushed out to the periphery of the organization, to the members

Epiphany Moment

What he read convinced him that the command-and-control model of organization that had grown up to support the industrial revolution had gotten out of hand. It simply didn’t work. Command-and-control organizations, Hock says, “were not only archaic and increasingly irrelevant. They were becoming a public menace, antithetical to the human spirit and destructive of the biosphere. I was convinced we were on the brink of an epidemic of institutional failure.”

He also had a deep conviction that if he ever got to create an organization, things would be different. He would try to conceive it based on biological concepts and metaphors.

It requires only ordinary people, caring. True community requires proximity; continual, direct contact and interaction between the people, place, and things of which it is composed.
Throughout history, the fundamental building block, the quintessential community, has always been the family. It is there that the greatest nonmonetary exchange of value takes place. It is there that the most powerful nonmaterial values are created and exchanged. It is from that community, for better or worse, that all others are formed.
The nonmonetary exchange of value is the very heart and soul of community, and community is the inescapable, essential element of civil society…Nonmonetary exchange of value implies an essential difference between receiving and getting. We receive a gift. We take possession. It is a mistake to confuse buying and selling with giving and receiving. It is a mistake to confuse money with value. It is a mistake to believe that all value can be measured. And it is a colossal mistake to attempt to monetize all value

Principles are never capable of ultimate achievement, for they presume constant evolution and change. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” is a true principle, for it says nothing about how it must be done. It presumes unlimited ability of people to evolve in accordance with their values, experience and relations with others.

There is no way to give people purpose and principles, yet there can be no self organizing, self governance without them. The only possibility is to evoke a gift of self-governance from the people themselves. It is there that a true leader may be useful, perhaps even essential.

Educe– a marvelous word seldom used or practiced, meaning, “to bring or draw forth something already present in a latent, or undeveloped form.” It can be contrasted with induce, too often used and practiced, meaning, “to prevail upon; move by persuasion or influence – to impel, incite, or urge.”

Leadership: Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution. True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community — who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community — who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader’s behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.

One cannot speak of leaders who cause organizations to achieve superlative performance, for no one can cause it to happen. Leaders can only recognize and modify conditions which prevent it; perceive and articulate a sense of community, a vision of the future, a body of principle to which people can become passionately committed, then encourage and enable them to discover and bring forth the extraordinary capabilities that lie trapped in everyone struggling to get out.
The best definition of “Lead” I have ever found is said to have originated in a four-hundred-year old Scottish dictionary: “To go before and show the way.” Follow, of necessity, then means to go where someone has gone before and shown the way. That perspective of lead and follow brings forth a marvelous word that has fallen into disuse: “Educe /eh-d-yuce.” It means “to bring or draw forth something already present in a latent, or undeveloped form.” It can be contrasted with “Induce,” which means “to prevail upon; move by persuasion or influence — to impel, incite, or urge.” Where behavior is educed, their lies leadership. Where behavior is induced, there lies manipulation. Where behavior is compelled, there lies tyranny.

Everyone was born a leader. Who can deny that from the moment of birth they were leading parents, siblings, and companions? Watch a baby cry and the parents jump. We were all born leaders; that is, until we were sent to school and taught to be managed and to manage. People are not “things” to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not “human resources.” We are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we are limited, whether by self or others.

Forget management. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, employ good people and free them to do the same. All else is trivia!

If you fail, the responsibility is entirely your own. There is no one to blame but yourself. At first that seems an impossible burden to bear. Upon reflection, it is neither to be feared nor avoided. Success, while it may provide encouragement, build confidence, and be joyful indeed, teaches an insidious lesson–to have too high an opinion of self. It is from failure that amazing growth and grace so often come, provided only that one can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and try again. There is no reason to be discouraged by shortcomings. True leadership presumes a standard quite beyond human perfectibility, and that is quite right. The only question of importance is whether one is steadily rising in the scale.
Everyone is a born leader. Everyone has power to lead themselves, lead their superiors, lead their peers, and free others to do the same. No one is without influence. Everyone has choices to make about where they will lead, and where they will be led. No one is without power to choose wisely and well.
It is instructive to look into the nature of leaders who have had a profound affect on the direction of society. Buddha, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Christ, Mohammed, Galileo, Lao Tzu, Newton, Thoreau–the list goes on and on, from every race, in every field of endeavor. Few came from positions of wealth and power. Few were born to families of fame or fortune. Few were great orators. None were elected to do what they did. None had permission to do what they did. Most were met with contempt and derision. Yet, somehow, their lives had profound affect on the consciousness of mankind.
What they had in common was uncommon ability to get beyond how things were, how they are, and how they might become, and immerse themselves in how they ought to be. But even a clear vision of how things ought to be was not the essential thing. The essential thing was conviction that the world as they believed ought to already exist in the minds and hearts of all people and could be educed if one lived in accordance with that belief.
They did not do so in pursuit of fame, money, power or material gain. They did so because they could not do otherwise, because it was what they had become. They lived lives of such authenticity that it gave what they then had to say compelling force and effect. The way they lived their lives educed behavior that lies buried in everyone, waiting to come forth. They went before and showed the way.

Visa

Visa bylaws encourage them to compete and innovate as much as possible. In a narrow band of activity essential to the success of the whole, they engage in the most intense cooperation.” This harmonious blend of cooperation and competition is what allowed the system to expand worldwide “the organization had to be based on biological concepts to evolve, in effect, to invent and organize itself.”

“The most abundant, least expensive, and most constantly abused resource in the world is human ingenuity.”

Enabling Organization:

A corporation whose product is coordination “Like the body, the brain, and the biosphere, it’s largely self-organizing.”
True leading and following presume perpetual liberty of both leader and follower to sever the relationship and pursue another path. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound, they are no longer leader or follower. The terms leader and follower imply the freedom and independent judgment of both. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, management/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave.

Healthy organizations induce behavior. Unhealthy organizations compel it

Quantum physicists and evolutionary biologists, among others, now believe that it is best to describe reality as a web of interconnected relationships that give rise to an ever-changing and evolving universe of objects that we perceive only partially with our limited senses. In that “Systemic” view of the world, nothing is merely the sum of the parts; parts have meaning only in reference to a greater whole in which everything is related to everything else.

Information becomes knowledge when it is integrated with other information in a form that is useful for deciding, acting, or composing new knowledge. Knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner that is useful in conceiving, anticipating, evaluating, and judging matters beyond the reach of information. Understanding becomes wisdom when informed by ethical, moral, and beneficent purpose and principle, along with memory of the past, and projection into the future. The fundamental characteristics of the opposite ends of this spectrum are very different. Data, on one end of the spectrum, is separable, objective, linear, mechanistic, and abundant. On the other end of the spectrum, wisdom is holistic, subjective, spiritual, conceptual, creative and scarce.

The more powerful and entrenched our internal model of reality, the more difficult it is to perceive and understand the fundamental nature of the changed world we experience. Yet without such perception, it is extremely difficult to understand and change our internal model.

Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. In every aspect of life, we do both. Every cell in our bodies vigorously competes for every atom of nutrient swallowed and every atom of oxygen inhaled, yet every cell can sense when the good of the whole requires they cooperate by relinquishing their demands when the need of other cells is greater. Life simply cannot exist, let alone reach its highest potential, without harmonious existence of competition and cooperation.

Understanding requires mastery of four ways of looking at things –

as they were
as they are
as they might become
as they ought to be.
Mastering all four perspectives and synthesizing them into a compelling concept of a constructive, peaceful future is the true work of the genius that lies buried in everyone, struggling to get out.

Perspective is the Achilles heel of the mind, distorting everything we think, know, believe, or imagine…Our internal model of reality is how we make sense of the world. And it can be a badly built place indeed. Even if it is magnificently constructed, it may have become archaic. Everything that gave rise to it may have changed. Society and the natural world are never stagnant. They are constantly becoming. When it becomes necessary to develop a new perspective on things, a new internal model of reality, the problem is never to get new ideas in, the problem is to get the old ideas out. Every mind is filled with old furniture. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable. We hate to throw it out. The old maxim is so often applied to the physical world, “nature abhors a vacuum,” is much more applicable to the mental world. Clear any room in your mind of old perspectives, and new perceptions will rush in. Yet, there is nothing we fear more. We are our ideas, concepts, and perceptions. Giving up any part of our internal model of reality is worse than losing a finger or an eye. Part of us no longer exists. However, unlike most organs of the physical body, our internal model of reality can be regenerated but never as it was. And it’s a frightening, painful process. It is our individual perspective, the view from our internal temple of reality, that often so discolors and distorts perception that we can neither anticipate what might occur nor conceive what ought to be.

Our current forms of organization are almost universally based on compelled behavior – on tyranny, for that is what compelled behavior is, no matter how benign it may appear or how carefully disguised and exercised. The organization of the future will be the embodiment of community based on shared purpose calling to the higher aspirations of people.

Forming a chaordic organization begins with an intensive search for Purpose, then proceeds to Principles, People, and Concept, and only then to Structure and Practice. It can’t be done well as a linear process

1. Purpose – a clear, simple statement of intent that identifies and binds the community together as a worth pursuit. Should speak to people and make them think that, “If we could achieve that, my life would have meaning

2. Principles – behavioral aspirations of the community. A clear, concise, unambiguous statement of a fundamental belief about how the whole and all the parts intend to conduct themselves in pursuit of the purpose. A principle is a precept against which all structures, decisions, actions, and results will be judged. A principle always has high ethical and moral content. It never prescribes structure or behavior; it only describes them. Principles often fall into two categories: principles of structure and principles of practice

3. People – when a sound body of belief is reasonably complete and agreed upon, the group can then begin to explore the people and organizations that would need to be participants in the enterprise in order to realize the purpose in accordance with the principles. This sounds simple, but rarely is. When people set aside all consideration of existing conditions, free themselves to think in accordance with their deepest beliefs, and do not bind their thinking with structure and practices before considering meaning and values, they usually discover that the number and variety of people and entities to participate in governance, ownership, rewards, rights, and obligations are much greater than anticipated. They usually find their deepest beliefs require transcendence of existing institutional boundaries and practices. Determining the people and institutions required to realize the purpose in accordance with the principles brings realization of just how narrow and restrictive existing institutions are in relation to the exploding diversity and complexity of society and the systemic nature of seemingly intractable social and environmental problems.

4. Concept – a visualization of the relationships between all the people that would best enable them to pursue the purpose in accordance with their principles. An organizational concept is perception of a structure that all may trust to be equitable, just, and effective. It is a pictorial representation of eligibility, rights, and obligations of all prospective participants in the community. The feedback part of the process never ends. Developing a new concept calls into question purpose, principles, and people. Every part of the process illuminates all subsequent and preceding parts, allowing each to be constantly revised and improved.

5. Structure – the embodiment of purpose, principles, people, and concept in a written document capable of creating legal reality in an appropriate jurisdiction, usually in the form of a charter and constitution or a certificate of incorporation and bylaws. It is the written, structural details of the conceptual relationships – details of eligibility, ownership, voting, bodies, and methods of governance. It is the contract of rights and obligations between all participants in the community

6. Practice – deliberations, decisions, and acts of all the participants in the community functioning within the structure of purpose in accordance with principles. long before the structural work is finished, everyone realizes they need not worry about the practices of the community

7. If you can accomplish all this, profit becomes a barking dog begging to be, let it

Dee on Management

An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it. Ultimately what determines the organization’s performance is the approach to management its leaders take.

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.

Hiring

Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.The The

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

Employ Yourself

Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength. It is idiotic to replicate your weakness. 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.

Compensation

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. As Napoleon observed, “No amount of money will induce someone to lay down their life, but they will gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon.”

Form and Substance

Substance is enduring, form is ephemeral. Failure to distinguish clearly between the two is ruinous. Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future. Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference. 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.

Creativity

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. You must get the old furniture of what you know, think, and believe out before anything new can get in. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

Leadership

Here is the very heart and soul of the matter. 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. Use the remainder to induce those you “work for” to understand and practice the theory. I use the terms “work for” advisedly, for if you don’t understand that you should be working for your mislabeled “subordinates,” you haven’t understood anything. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.

Dee on Organization

The truth is that a corporation, or any organization for that matter, has no reality save in the mind. It is nothing but an idea; a mental construct to which people are drawn in pursuit of common purpose; a conceptual embodiment of a very old, very powerful idea called community.

Healthy organizations are a mental concept of relationship to which people are drawn by hope, vision, values, and meaning, along with the liberty to cooperatively pursue them. Healthy organizations educe behavior. Educed behavior is inherently constructive. Unhealthy organizations are no less a mental concept of relationship, but one to which people are compelled by accident of birth, necessity, or force. Unhealthy organizations compel behavior. Compelled behavior is inherently destructive.

The organization must be adaptable and responsive to changing conditions, while preserving overall cohesion and unity of purpose. This is the fundamental paradox facing businesses, governments, and societies alike. Adaptability requires that the individual components of the system be in competition. And yet cohesion requires that those same individuals cooperate with each other, thereby giving up at least some of their freedom to compete.
The trick is to find the delicate balance that allows the system to avoid turf fights and back-stabbing on the one hand, and authoritarian micromanagement on the other. “Neither competition nor cooperation can rise to its highest potential unless both are seamlessly blended,” says Hock. “Either without the other swiftly becomes dangerous and destructive.”
The organization must cultivate equity, autonomy, and individual opportunity. “Given the right circumstances,” says Hock, “from no more than dreams, determination, and the liberty to try, quite ordinary people consistently do extraordinary things.”
The organization’s governing structure must distribute power and function to the lowest level possible. “No function should be performed by any part of the whole that could reasonably be done by any more peripheral part,” says Hock, “and no power should be vested in any part that might reasonably be exercised by any lesser part.”
The governing structure must not be a chain of command, but rather a framework for dialogue, deliberation, and coordination among equals. Authority, in other words, comes from the bottom up, not the top down.
The better an organization is, the less obvious it is. It’s the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent.
Four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper. Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition.
Businesses, as well as nations, races, and tribes die out or become irrelevant not when defeated or suppressed, but rather when they lose shared vision, principles, meaning, and values.

Managing Oneself

Without management of self, no one is fit for authority, no matter how much they acquire. The more authority they acquire the more dangerous they become. It is the management of self that should have half of our time and the best of our ability. And when we do, the ethical, moral and spiritual elements of managing self are inescapable.
The first and paramount responsibility of anyone who purports to manage is to manage self, one’s own integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words and acts. It is a complex, never-ending, incredibly difficult, oft-shunned task.

Managing Up

The second responsibility is to manage those who have authority over us: bosses, supervisors, directors, regulators, ad infinitum.
In an organized world, there are always people with authority over us. Without their consent and support, how can we follow conviction, exercise judgment, use creative ability, achieve constructive results or create conditions by which others can do the same? Managing superiors is essential. Devoting a quarter of our time and ability to that effort is not too much.

Managing One’s Peers

The third responsibility is to manage one’s peers—those over whom we have no authority and who have no authority over us—associates, competitors, suppliers, customers—the entire environment, if you will.
Without their support, respect and confidence, little or nothing can be accomplished. Peers can make a small heaven or hell of our life. Is it not wise to devote at least a fifth of our time, energy and ingenuity to managing peers?

Hiring People

The fourth responsibility is to manage those over whom we have authority.
“The common response is that all one’s time will be consumed managing self, superiors and peers. There will be no time to manage subordinates. Exactly! One need only select decent people, introduce them to the concept, induce them to practice it and enjoy the process.
“If those over whom we have authority properly manage themselves, manage us, manage their peers and replicate the process with those they employ, what is there to do but see they are properly recognized, rewarded and stay out of their way?
“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.”
The obvious question then always erupts. How do you manage superiors, bosses, regulators, associates, customers? The answer is equally obvious. You cannot. But can you understand them? Can you persuade them? Can you motivate them? Can you disturb them, influence them, forgive them? Can you set them an example? Eventually the proper word emerges. Can you lead them? Of course you can, provided only that you have properly led yourself. There are no rules and regulations so rigorous, no organization so hierarchical, no bosses so abusive that they can prevent us from behaving this way. No individual and no organization, short of killing us, can prevent such use of our energy, ability, and ingenuity. They may make it more difficult, but they can’t prevent it. The real power is ours, not theirs, provided only that we can work our way around the killing.

Power: True power is never used. If you use power, you never really had it.

Human Relations: First, last, and only principle — when dealing with subordinates, repeat silently to yourself, “You are as great to you as I am to me, therefore, we are equal.” When dealing with superiors, repeat silently to yourself, “I am as great to me as you are to you, therefore we are equal.”

Criticism: Active critics are a great asset. Without the slightest expenditure of time or effort, we have our weakness and error made apparent and alternatives proposed. We need only listen carefully, dismiss that which arises from ignorance, ignore that which arises from envy or malice, and embrace that which has merit.

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

Ego, Envy, Avarice, and Ambition: Four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper. Harbor them at your peril, for although you expect to ride on their back, you will end up in their belly.

Position: Subordinates may owe a measure of obedience by virtue of your position, but they owe no respectsave that which you earn by your daily conduct. Without their respect, your authority is destructive.

Mistakes: Toothless little things, providing you can recognize them, admit them, correct them, learn from them, and rise above them. If not, they grow fangs and strike.

Accomplishment: Never confuse activity with productivity. It is not what goes in your end of the pipe that matters, but what comes out the other end. Everything but intense thought, judgment, and action is infected to some degree with meaningless activity. Think! Judge! Act! Free others to do the same!

Hiring: Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength. It is stupid to replicate your weakness. Employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability and judgment are radically different from your own and recognize that it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.

Creativity: The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.

Listening: While you can learn much by listening carefully to what people say, a great deal more is revealed by what they do not say. Listen as carefully to silence as to sound.

Judgment: Judgment is a muscle of the mind developed by use. You lose nothing by trusting it. If you trust it and it is bad, you will know quickly and can improve it. If you trust it and it is consistently good, you will succeed, and the sooner the better. If it is consistently good and you don’t trust it, you will become the saddest of all creatures; one who could have succeeded but followed the poor judgment of others to failure.

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

Life is uncertainty, surprise, hate, wonder, speculation, love, joy, pain, mystery, beauty, and a thousand other things, some we can’t even imagine. Control requires denial of life. Life is not about certainty or controlling. It’s not about getting. It’s not about having. It’s not about knowing. It’s not even about being. Life is eternal perpetual becoming or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious, odyssey to be experienced. At bottom, desire to command and control is a deadly destructive compulsion to rob oneself and others of the joys of living.

The concept of organizations composed of semi-autonomous equals affiliated for common purpose, such as Visa, the Internet, Linux software, The United Religions Initiative and Wicipedia, has intensified the endless debate as to whether competition or cooperation should rule the day. Each has passionate messiahs to preach its virtue. The messiahs on both sides are wrong. Competition and cooperation are not contraries. They have no opposite meaning. They are complimentary. In every aspect of life, we do both. Schools are highly cooperative endeavors within which scholars vigorously compete. The Olympic Games combine immense cooperation in structure and rules with intense competition in events. As the runners leap from the blocks, competition and cooperation are occurring in a single, indistinguishable blur. Every cell in our bodies vigorously competes for every atom of nutrient swallowed and every atom of oxygen inhaled, yet every cell can sense when the good of the whole requires they cooperate by relinquishing their demands when the need of other cells is greater. Life simply cannot exist, let alone reach its highest potential, without harmonious existence of competition and cooperation

Competition gone mad results in the mindless pursuit of self-interest, abuse of others, retaliation, accelerating anarchy, and eventual chaos. Only in a much more harmonious, oscillating dance of both competition and cooperation, can the extremes of control and chaos be avoided, and peaceful, permanent, societal order be found. If relative harmony is maintained between the two, they drive one another. The more we compete, the more we need to cooperate. The more we cooperate, the more and better we can compete.

In organizations of the future, it will be much more important to have a clear, compelling purpose and sound principles within which many specific, short-term objectives can be quickly achieved, than a long-range plan with fixed, measurable objectives. Such plans often lead to futile attempts to control events in order to make them fit the plan, rather than understanding events so as to advance by all means in the desired direction. In time of rapid, radical change, long-term plans are often so generally stated as to require endless interpretation, in which case they are no plan at all, or they become so rigid that they diminish thought, obscure vision and muffle advocacy of other, more innovative views.

Out of the lumber of things we are taught, the gravel and cement of our experience and the nails of things we observe, we slowly erect an internal edifice, an internal temple of reality, gradually filling it with the furniture of habit, custom, preference, belief and bias. We get comfortable there. It’s our sanctuary. Through its windows, warped though the glass may be, we view society and the world. Our internal model of reality is how we make sense of the world. And it can be a badly built place indeed. Even if it is well constructed, it may have become archaic. Everything that gave rise to it may have changed. Society and the natural world are never stagnant. They are constantly becoming.

When it becomes necessary to develop a new perception of things, a new internal model of reality, the problem is never to get new ideas in, the problem is to get old ideas out. Every mind is filled with old furniture. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. We hate to throw it out. The old maxim so often applied to the physical world, “nature abhors a vacuum”, is much more applicable to the mental world. Clear any room in your mind of old perspectives, and new perceptions will rush in. Yet, there is nothing we fear more. It is our individual perspective, the view from our internal temple of reality, that constantly discolors and distorts our perception, blinding us to how things might become, or conceiving of how they ought to be. Perspective is the Achilles heel of the mind.

Leadership is the ability to make wise decisions, and act responsibly upon them, when one has little more than a clear sense of direction, proper values, and some understanding of the forces driving change. It requires true leadership. It requires those who can go before and show the way. It requires educing the inherent integrity and virtue that lies within everyone waiting to be aroused and brought into play.

Quotes

“The person who fights for a dying cause is admired, supported and honored. The person who fights for a new cause struggling to be born is misunderstood, reviled and attacked. Nothing is more difficult than taking the lead in a new order of things”

Mountains, I discovered three principal loves of my life: nature, reading, and unstructured learning.

It led to three questions that soon dominated my life. Time and time again I asked:

Why are individuals, everywhere, increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the organizations of which they are part?
Why are organizations, everywhere, increasingly unable to manage their affairs?
Why are society and the biosphere increasing in disarray?

Happiness may be difficult, but it is not complicated. Dismiss desire, discard opinion, honor the past, trust the future, and treasure the moment.
Like fishermen, we constantly cast the lure of expectation ahead of us, hoping to hook a desired piece of the future. Something unimaginable always takes the bait.
Expecting to achieve all that we demand of ourselves is a love affair with disappointment.
One should not read like a dog obeying its master, but like an eagle hunting its prey.
Every mountain is two mountains: the one that urges us to climb and the one that punishes us when we do.
The pleasures of youth are the pains of old age, just as the pleasures of old age are the pains of youth.
If you never test your courage and strength, how can you measure the validity of your fears?
This day brought health, moderation, someone to love, work to be done, and a clear sky under which to do it. What more could anyone want?
Much that cannot be calculated is true. Much that can be calculated is false. Nothing that can be calculated is beauty.
It is a grave mistake to think that small acts of compassion and generosity cannot change the world for the better, since they are the only things that ever have.
What becomes known is worthless until it is shared.
No evil seeks me out. My ignorance, foolishness, and desire put me in the way of it.
Everything we say, do, or write belongs to the world. Others will take meaning from us that we never imagined or intended. We can do no more than choose our words and act with all the integrity, wisdom, and beauty we have at hand.
Every thought and every act has its origin in the endless past and will affect the infinite future. Choice and consequence are life.
Context is critical to understanding. When others seek us in our context, they come to know us far better than we know them. When we seek them in their context, we come to know them far better than they know us.
We judge others harshly by the standards we profess rather than those we practice. Yet we resent it bitterly when they return the favor.
Language, no matter how carefully crafted, is inadequate to fully convey what is in one’s mind, and equally inadequate for complete comprehension by the minds of others.
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.
Advice is as abundant as help is rare. People who ask for advice more often need help but rarely get it. People who ask for help rarely need advice but often get it. It is a kindness to the world to be liberal with help and chary with advice.
There is nothing that can’t be imposed on an indifferent many by a dedicated few.
Change is the speed with which we leave the place where we think we are.
So unfold your life that none can mistake its meaning.
No dream is so great as the person you might become by remaining true to it.
In all of the universe, no two things are entirely alike, entirely different, or entirely separable.
There is an unknown inner essence that determines the unconscious and directs the conscious. Beneath the dream is the dreamer. We are the dreaming, not the dreamer.
What is my life made of? Love of nature, love of literature, love of solitude, love of thought, and love of another. One could do much worse.
Never in the history of language has there been a poem with a tenth the beauty of a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower.
When there is failure, grab all the blame you can get. There may not be enough to go around.
Educational systems are giant abstractions in which people forgo experience, humanity and wisdom in favor of symbolism, rationalization, and indoctrination.
Tyrants can kill us, but they cannot enslave us against our will, since mind, spirit, and heart remain ours to command. Slavery requires consent.
The universe does not exert force in any meaningful sense. The sun does not “force” the planets into orbit or “command” them to do anything. It merely places an attraction in their path to which they respond in accordance with their nature. It would be a blessing if people who aspire to be great could understand this principle and behave in accordance with it.
The universe seeks perfection by patient attention to small things. A marvelous life is no different.
There are countless people to do things I choose not to do. There is but one to do those that I choose to do. Every doer is unique to the deed. Every deed is unique to the doer.
Life is forever struggling to move on. Death is the proof of it.
Life can be a junkyard of getting and having or a garden of giving and becoming. Would you die a rusted piston stinking of burnt oil, or a blooming rose?
Love has no expert, no dogma, no doctrine, no design. Love simply is.
Masculinity is emotional stability, undaunted integrity, quiet courage, humility, generosity, and capacity for enduring love, or it is nothing.
The wise make great use of adversity. The foolish whine about it.
Most lives consist of desires that will never be realized, and realized desires without gratification.
One of the great misfortunes of life is to approach love as if it were a hot stove by which we were once burned.
Solitude has its merits, but who has ever seen a wave traveling alone, or a single flake of falling snow?
We all wander lost in the infinite vagaries of the human mind.
There are thousands of accidental habits for each one that is planned.
We call false that which conflicts with what we believe to be true. That does not make it so. It can as easily be lack of comprehension.
Ideas arise from analysis. Concepts arise from synthesis.
All things most worth thinking about will never be settled.
One who cannot act effectively has no practical use for new ideas.
What societies we might create if no one were impressed by authority, constrained by custom, mesmerized by religion, or influenced by fashion.
Nature will never take direction from us no matter how much havoc we create in the attempt.
Higher purpose partially realized is better than lower purpose fully realized, for it contains much greater possibility.
If you can’t be precise, be concise;
Impatience is a perpetual barrier between desire and realization.
Romance is the poetry of the young, ambition the poetry of the middle aged, memory the poetry of the old, and religion the poetry of the dying.
The worst books benefit from the genius of the best readers, but the worst readers do not benefit from the genius of the best books.
Despite the desperate effort of parents to teach their children good behavior, children continue to behave pretty much like their parents.
The Maori greeting, nose and forehead touching, symbolizes “one breath, one mind.” At that moment both are sharing physicality in the form of atoms and molecules through breath and skin, and sharing consciousness in the form of thought and feeling. The greeting symbolizes the reality of inseparable connectedness. The Western habit of shaking hands appears to symbolize remaining at a distance, grasping something belonging to another, and attempting to shake it loose.
The ferocity with which a dog defends its bone tells a great deal more about the nature of the dog than the quality of the bone.
The rational mind deals well with some things such as quantity, money, mathematics, and facts, but it’s a poor instrument to deal with others such as values, quality, or wisdom. Those require a wholeness of mind, body, and spirit quite beyond our present fragmented, mechanistic mentalities. We are continually smashing the kernel of life with hammers of logic.
I know my mind was closed at the end, but was it open in the beginning?
The great unanswered questions. Why am I here? What am I here? Where am I here? When am I going?
Life is never indifferent and never in balance. We are steadily overcoming our problems, or they are steadily overcoming us.
Open your clenched fist and the universe will gladly lie down in the palm of your hand.
Wait patiently and listen carefully until something whispers to your soul–then quietly follow the sound.
Love of self has no rival.
Never entrust the solving of a problem to those who may benefit from the solution.
There is no shortage of men who would set civilization on fire to warm their fingers.
Time eternally flows in all directions instantly arriving everywhere at once.
I lay partially awake this morning surfing the shores of consciousness as lucid, splendid thoughts inseparable from the cosmos flow through all elements of being. With a fully awake mind, those same thoughts turn isolated, limp, and opaque. Oh, to be able to think with the universal intelligence of the cosmos, rather than the pitiful little manifestation of it called mind. Once in a while there are flashes of what it would be like—simple, beautiful, effortless.
Life is preparation for something that will never happen. Death makes certain of that.
For millennia, mankind has fought against the seven deadly sins: anger, sloth, envy, gluttony, pride, avarice, and lust. It took the twentieth-century, science, technology, the nation state, and commercial corporations to turn them into applauded, revered, rewarded virtues.
If we forgave others what we forgive ourselves, life would either be magnificent or intolerable. I can’t figure out which.
If we examine with clear eyes what we have done to the majority of people on earth, to the earth itself, and to all other forms of life thereon, we can only hope that there are no gods, or if there are, that they are not just.
When we fully attend to management of self, excellent management of all else is unavoidable.
From the past, the wisest. From the present, the fittest. From the future, the finest.
Old people have so little left of life they should cease trying to make it bring what they desire and make the most of what it offers. Come to think of it, that’s not bad policy for young people as well.
Growth for the sake of growth without concern for the host is the philosophy of a cell gone mad. It’s called cancer. People have become a cancer of the earth for which there is no cure unless by some miracle of understanding we become capable of self-remission.
Every life is an odyssey that can explore the heights of happiness, plumb the depths of despair, or wander lost in the deserts of indifference.
a meaningful life cannot be made from denial. It must be made from affirmation.
Wealth, power, and fame come at a terrible price, for the only currency with which they can be bought is one’s life.
Like bits of ice on a hot stove, we dance through life supported on our own melting.
I know nothing about those who claim that the universe and all therein is nothing but random, meaningless chance. Perhaps their lives are truly so. Perhaps that is how they choose it to be. I know only that my life has meaning. I cannot will it to be otherwise. I may never know the fullness of its meaning, but I do know that life is eternal becoming. That alone is more than enough meaning.
Would you give meaning to your life? Then give your life to meaning.
The present is the history of the future, just as the past is the history of the present
Andre Gide is said to have written, “To discover new lands we must lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” Yes, and one must carry a large cargo of courage, confidence, and faith as well.
What a bore it is to live in the age of the “mathefication of man”—the effort to reduce every mystery and marvel of life to measurement and mechanics. Where is the scientist who can write an equation for the mystery of a thought or the feeling evoked by a newborn child?
Why be selfish and hide your errors? Reveal them at once for there are countless people greatly in need of mistakes to emulate.
It is not more answers we need, but better questions. It is not more action we need, but deeper reflection. It is not more knowledge we need, but profounder wisdom. It is not more technology we need, but greater aspirations.
We are each the author of our own life. Whatever we write, masterpiece or trash, it will be published and widely read throughout our life and for decades thereafter.
Wisdom is complex; knowledge is simple. Wisdom is rare; knowledge is abundant. Wisdom is difficult; knowledge is easy. We are much better off to deeply understand what little we know, than to know much more than we understand, for understanding, not knowledge, is the path to wisdom.
Our words conceal more than they reveal, contain more than they convey, achieve less than we desire, offend more than we intend.
My old friend, Rufus, the great horned owl, floats to his usual perch on the tip of a small dead tree outside the study window. Silhouetted against the dying light, he scans the grassy hilltop for a careless rodent on which to dine. Here I sit, day after day, cooped up in the study, getting a numb butt while fretting over money to be made, speeches to be given, and a book to be written. Rufus goes when and where he likes, free of ego, avarice, or ambition, trusting nature to provide sustenance, taking no more than his daily needs when there is plenty, patiently enduring when there is not. Which is the wiser creature? I don’t really want to know the answer.
Every child is opposed to conformity, and every organization is determined to impose it. Children seldom win, but my heart and hope is with those who do.
“Should have” cannot create a better life. It can only make miserable the one we have. “Ought to,” with commitment, has a chance.
Love, share, accept, care; what else matters?
We push our children out the door with one hand urging them to conquer the world, and cling to them tenaciously with the other, wishing they would remain with us forever. Fortunately, neither is our choice to make.
Our educational system has become a giant abstraction in which people are led to forgo reality, humanity and wisdom in favor of symbolism, logic, and rationalization.
The gift of life cannot be kept. It can be transmitted but must be given back. We can never know the moment of our final giving. As my sun begins to set, few things matter much, but they expand to fill the universe—simple things, like tolerance, generosity, empathy, love. Ah, to have known sooner and not been cursed with ego, envy, avarice, and ambition. Now, this moment old man, and the next—and the next—love, give, and accept.
Loosen your grip on opinion and desire. Acceptance and peace are waiting to take you by the hand.
is a prudent man who never reveals how little he thinks of others or how much he thinks of himself.
Vision without effort is impotent. Effort without vision is blind.
Life compels. It strikes us where and how we are, not when we wish or are prepared. One cannot prepare for life—for death, perhaps—but never for life. Life can only be lived.
Nothing is more beautiful and worth emulating than character, wisdom, and age in harmony with one another. The container is irrelevant.
If you are careful about where you go, there will be no need to conceal where you have been.
Oh, how we love to judge ourselves by our good intentions and others by their bad performances.
Academic education makes an informed man; Experiential education makes an able one.
Know thyself. No matter how badly a dog wants to fly, it can never do so by wagging its tail.
Enjoy the convenience of prosperity, but treasure the benefit of adversity.
Quality of life is determined by what we do with what we have, not what we get from what we do.
Fame, like foam on the beach, does not endure, nor is there anything of substance in it.
Grief shared is halved; happiness shared is doubled.
A wise man goes forth to meet difficulty rather than agonizing at its approach.
When speaking of one’s self, seldom and modest should be the rule.
The fortune of one man is usually built on the folly of many others.
The mind of man is a curious thing, for it often expects to realize an end without enduring the means or experiencing the consequences.
The person who has the least respect for others will inevitably demand the most respect from them.
When we denigrate the grandeur of nature and assert the greatness of man, we are on the path to inevitable demise. Nature gave rise to man. Man can never give rise to nature.
Every triumph or tribulation, every success or failure, every hope or fear is an opportunity to draw upon the unfathomable resources of the universe with which we are amply endowed. Humility in the face of fame, generosity in the face of riches, tolerance in the face of criticism, endurance in the face of adversity, love in the face of hate—they are all within us patiently waiting to be educed.
Character buds when we are young, blossoms as we mature, fruits as we age, and seeds when we are old. Wisdom suggests we nurture it well.
Body is bestowed as a matter of chance. Character is developed as a matter of choice.
While we may be helpless to change a difficult situation such as divorce or loss of a job, we remain free to change our opinion about it. Transcend opinion and nothing has the power to wound.
Without a “why” to live for, enduring the “where” and “how” is miserable.
We can never escape the tension between emotion and reason; neither should we wish to, for life is meaningless without it.
We enter into each moment holding hands with a future composed of infinite possibilities and a past composed of infinite realities.
What richness would enter our lives if we could understand and participate in communication between all other forms of life.
The wise make known their gratitude for the smallest favor they receive and expect none for the greatest benefit they bestow.
Aspire to the warmth of praise and you must risk the chill of ridicule.
Curse desire, that insidious devil that turns us into masters of nothing and slaves of everything.
Retirement is confrontation between what we wish we were and what we have actually become.
If you would incite effort you must elevate either fear or hope.
We yearn too soon and reflect too late.
Man is half insatiable desire and half misery from want of satisfying it.
Envy is admission of inferiority.
The universe is full of wonderful answers patiently waiting for us to ask the right questions.
Common sense is wisdom in working clothes.
Never go to a wise man for an elegant answer; go for a beautiful question.
The surest way to gain advantage over enemies is to know and appreciate their good qualities better than they do.
The universe may have no purpose, but there is purpose in the universe, just as life may have no purpose, but there is purpose in life. Purpose is not a possession, it is a direction.
Why should we grant others the power to upset us? Our opinion of what they say or do is their only power, and opinion is ours to do with as we choose.
A principle is no principle at all until it is practiced.
Old minds should be like ripe, falling fruit, rich with seeds of wisdom for the evolution of the species.
Emergence of new and more beneficent concepts of organization will depend upon the ease with which ideas, metaphors, and language move among ordinary people, not the currency they may have among intellectuals.
“How are you?” “Wonderful. Each day I die a little, and it’s teaching me how to live.”
Every night is a retreat; every morning a victory.
Freedom is not the right to do as we please, but the wisdom to know what ought to be done—and the courage to do it.
As diverse and complex as we perceive the external world to be, the internal world is enormously more so. It would take a mind wider and deeper than the universe to understand a single one of us.
In the modern world, there is ever less leisure, not because we work harder, but because recreation has become as frantic and strenuous as work.
Conformity and docility are poor qualities for anyone who would be curious, creative, and free.
Never expect to work in one area and progress in another. If our time, ability, and energy are concentrated on the getting of money, acquisition of power, war, science, and technology, then regression in beauty, wisdom, justice, morality, and love are inevitable.
Patience married to will gives birth to persistence.
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.
The principal thing a young student can do to avoid trouble is to sit quietly, behave submissively, and wonder if this is what it feels like to be dead.
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.
Our opinion of that which we can neither control nor influence affects nothing but our own happiness, but that it affects profoundly.
When you ask, “What do you think?” those who reply with what you want them to say may be clever people and may please you greatly, but they are merely reflecting your ego, which will lead you into endless folly without the slightest regret.
To be wholly open to possibility while improving probability is the trick.
Change, chance, and choice are words for opportunity. Absence of them would result in a frozen universe antithetical to life. In fact, change, chance, and choice are life!
How we love those who profess ignorance so that we may appear wise. How we hate those who profess wisdom so that we appear ignorant.
When you run headlong away from anything, you are most likely to run headlong into something worse.
Should we tenaciously cling to the old ways and refuse to change when we are uncertain of what is right about them, but see clearly what is wrong with them?
The weakness of knowledge is not in what we do not know, or what we can never know, but in what we know that has never been so.
There are a great many more teachers who believe their students have been well taught than there are students who believe they have learned well from a great teacher.
Accomplishment is one part commitment, one part ability, one part persistence, and one part circumstance. Circumstance we cannot control. The rest we might.
The relational aspect of all things is the music that sets life and the universe dancing.
Misery is nothing but the dark side of desire.
You can’t see through anything by turning away from it.
Is anything more beautiful than the voice of someone we love?
Lust for power is essentially a manifestation of fear. We fear that power in the hands of others will be used to our detriment and choose to become oppressor rather than risk oppression.
As one approaches the end of life, that which truly matters emerges sharp and clear—family, love, generosity, peace, nature, comfort.
Don’t preach. Don’t teach. Don’t judge. Take a loved child by the hand and explore something fascinating together.
By what right and what evidence can we claim that any form of life is more advanced, more perfect, more entitled to exist than any other. Different? Yes. Serving other purposes? Of course. Beyond our comprehension? Often. But qualitatively superior? That we cannot know. To pretend otherwise is arrogant nonsense.
Each morning I rise determined to change the world, to make a lot of money, to meditate, to exercise, to write something original, to paint a grand picture, to plant some trees, to read a good book, and to spend more time with family. It does make some days a bit difficult.
Get a firm grip on values before opening your arms to change.
In the ultimate macro view, everything is in harmony. In the ultimate micro view, everything is in conflict.
Excess is the ultimate toxicity.
Originality and creativity do not result from calculated effort, but from the natural state of consciousness—an open mind at play.
Homo sapiens is one of evolution’s most interesting experiments, but we should never forget that an experiment is all that we are.
No one can ever fully know the wealth of creativity, curiosity, and love of learning in all children. What a pity we send them to school to have it crushed.
Every mistake is a bargain if you learn the lesson it contains and remember it well.
Great thought, great achievement, and great love have this in common: all involve great risk.
How to live so as to deserve the gift of life and at the end, make an honorable return of it—is that the question?
A recognized and corrected error vanishes leaving behind two things of great value—experience of error, and how to rise above it.
To die loving life so much that one mourns its passing is not the same as fear of dying.
An extraordinary insight is not necessarily a revealed truth.
The finest learning occurs when experience and symbolism collide.
Disappointment has its locus in transition from aspiration to realization.
History is fiction masquerading as fact in the hope of being accepted as reality. It reveals nothing so much as what we would, now and in the future, like to pretend the past has been.
We are each given enough strength to act in accordance with our convictions and enough weakness to abandon them. Character lies in the choice we make.
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.
Nothing can be more violent and merciless than a group of true believers, no matter what they choose to believe.
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.
When you think deeply about it, nothing seems more strange or uncertain of origin than laughter.
You can’t make a good child by abusing a bad one, but you can easily make a bad child by abusing a good one.
Certainty is the place where questions go to die.
Knowing must be a form of ignorance, since wisdom always grows from doubt.
The more we know, the more mysterious life becomes. Knowledge is the great manufactory of mystery.
Is it not strange how we readily admit animals dream but vociferously deny they think?
Knowledge is never in doubt. Wisdom is never certain.
True leadership is an act of faith in the intelligence, ability, and character of the people one is privileged to lead. What now passes for leadership is anything but.
Love is no moralist. It does not ask what is right or wrong, true or false, good or bad, ugly or beautiful, better or worse. Love simply loves.
It is not the prerogative of man to play on nature’s chessboard while writing the rules of the game.
Burdens shouldered are never so onerous as those dragged.
Mix a quart of uncertainty, a quart of complexity, a quart of mystery, and a quart of adventure and you have a gallon of life.
The wise man encourages life to live him; the fool attempts to live life.
To delay gratification of anger is the best way to surmount it.
No one can teach us the joy of living; we are endowed with it. So why are we continually waiting for the lecture?
You can please anyone by the mere artifice of appearing to be pleased by them.
If we could see ourselves as others see us, improvement would be instantaneous, for few of us could tolerate the sight.
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.
Pessimism and cynicism lead to despair and indolence. There is no driving force in them. Nature and evolution don’t whine, why should we?
What does it mean to live in a world in which we accept the abuse and abysmal poverty of hundreds of millions of people more easily than our own inconvenience?
Fall deeply in love with paradox and you are halfway to the changed consciousness that a livable world demands.
Much sorrow is merely inability to relish the innumerable little pleasures that surround us every moment, such as the next breath, the next beat of our heart, or the touch of a warm hand.
When you finally admit error or weakness, don’t be surprised if there is no one around who hasn’t already noticed it.
Life is one long treachery to those who expect it to conform to their desires.
We never know our power until great difficulties or great opportunities have need of it.
Be cautious about raising expectations. Those who expect nothing and receive a little are pleased. The same people, if they expect a great deal and receive less, are displeased even though they receive more than they would have in the first case.
Cheerfulness is the habit of treasuring the little pleasures that surround us every moment of every day.
One who quickly and effectively sets about correcting a mistake has no time or need to regret having made it.
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.
The troubles of life are rarely as terrible in reality as they are in imagination.
It is both foolish and weak to defer confronting what cannot be avoided.
Once fame is necessary to our happiness, power to make us miserable lies in the hands of everyone.
I have done many great things perfectly—the ones I imagined but never attempted.
Delaying what we must do eventually does nothing but lengthen the time and distance we must carry the burden.
If we spent a tenth the time and energy cleaning up our characters as we do cleaning up our kitchens, what a grand world this might become.
Old age is inclined to complain too quickly, advise too much, talk too long, change too little, and act too late.
It is easier and much better to dissolve conflict than to resolve it.
The experience, meaning, and destiny of each life are unique and cannot be compared to those of any other.
Most troubles in life are attributable to two causes: first, not getting what we want, and second, getting what we want.
You can never get out of reading a book what you are unable to put into it.
Knowledge declares; wisdom wonders.
Envy is the most common malignancy for it requires no cause, no courage, no labor, no intelligence, and no ability—only an object. It gives no pleasure, yet who is free of it?
It is an anomaly of life to suffer more pain from our weaknesses than pleasure from our endowments.
Man’s greatest energy comes not from his mind or mechanical gadgets, but from his dreams. His dreams come from his subconscious; his subconscious, from his spirit. How he nourishes spirit determines his future.
Let others dispute while you ponder; let them fight while you explore; let them know while you wonder; let them grasp while you give; let them calculate while you admire.
The most interesting people are always the most interested people.
Pleasure seldom arrives when expected or is found where sought.
It is much less difficult to become rich by reducing desire than by trying to satisfy it.
It is wise to avoid or eliminate problems in the beginning, for that is when they are least powerful and less pervasive.
To be happy, man must be moving into the future with anticipation and aspiration. A stationary state is tedious, a declining state dismal, and a hopeless state intolerable.
The language of beauty requires no sound; the sound of beauty requires no language.
Introspection is both the curse and the blessing of life.
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.
Life is short, knowledge is endless, wisdom is infinite. Let us do what we can while realizing that the best within us and the best among us are not very advanced.
Surely it is better to be concerned about the future than full of regret for the past. Anticipated evil may never come, may be brief, and may be avoided, but the past is irrevocable, and regret for it everlasting.
Valuing ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty is neither weak nor foolish. It is the essence of being human.
The true value of anything is best discovered in the loss of it.
The reason most things do not get done is that the energy required in deciding what to do is minuscule in comparison to the energy required to do it.
When pleasure comes, accept it with all your heart, for that it deserves, then let it go and wish it well, for pleasure is free and belongs to no one.
Commerce and capital prefer the highly trained, specialized mind that values money above man, technology above nature, power above principle, and profit above all else. Universities are happy to produce them in quantity.
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.
The lamp of consciousness illuminates only the present. The past is forever frozen, the future forever dark.
Nothing is more common than ignorance concealed in a cloak of facts.
Complaining about life is like hurling sand against the wind.
Those who have never met a fool have no mirror.
Forgive the living now. They will have no use for it when they are dead.
Anyone wishing to be free must embrace a great many responsibilities before claiming any rights.
A good friend halves grief and doubles pleasure.
Everything we get that we do not give will one day be taken from us.
Mathematics and physics can be taught; wisdom must be learned from experience.
Making a life out of hard determinate facts when it could be made from experience that stimulates the senses and fires the imagination is like searching for beauty in a junkyard.
Finding a right response to the difficulties and accepting the responsibilities that life perpetually presents is one path to meaning.
For millennia, most of man’s problems were caused by natural, external forces quite beyond his control. Now most of his problems are caused by his own deliberate acts, which seem equally beyond his control. Our problems are internal, not external, and it is there, in our own consciousness, that the solutions must be found.
Ignore logic and reality. Live entirely in the strength of your imagination, passion, and commitment and you may become one of the prophets of your era.
When I realize that the universe is capable of presenting something wonderful within the hour, it’s hard to be patient.
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.
Life is not this, that, or the other. Life simply is.
Misery abounds when we struggle to live our lives; harmony is everywhere when we let life live us.
Mistakes should be readily forgiven. Failure to learn from them should not.
The greatest ideas are not those we grasp intellectually, but those that we feel in the depths of our being.
Since the mind never works linearly by subject matter but flutters from thought to thought and idea to idea with the agility of a butterfly sipping nectar in a field of wildflowers,
Dreams are destroyed by their realization and achievement by accomplishment, but hope lives on forever.
In our insatiable quest to know, what has happened to our capacity to care? In our lust to get, what has happened to our desire to give? In our eagerness to hate, what has happened to our capacity to love? The answers are too unpleasant to contemplate.
There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved if we love broadly, deeply, and wisely enough.
Any idiot can impose and exercise control. It takes genius to ensure freedom and release creativity.
Everything we think, experience, or feel is infinitely richer and more complex than the language we have to explain it.
Odd that the more technology and laborsaving devices a society employs, the less leisure and contentment it has.
Either this moment is eternity or there isn’t any.
The whole human being finds the greatest pleasure when creatively, usefully engaging mind, body, and soul.
Those who know the least are the most eager to explain everything.
Without doubt, physical ability declines with age, yet wisdom increases as compensation for the loss. Until mind and spirit yield, the notion of age as diminishment of the quality of life is nonsense.
An impossible dream realized becomes ordinary when repeated.
Memory and imagination serve us well when we want to escape the moment.
Unrecorded thoughts are illusive and evanescent. When they are recorded, they take on permanency, enabling us to discover error, improve content, and refine expression.
The only thing a wise man is certain of is his ignorance.
There are two things we can depend on: the eternal play of possibility and the eternal certainty of the unforeseen.
“Use your head but follow your heart” is my advice to all my grandchildren. Come to think of it, it’s not bad advice for adults as well.
Water does not always seek the lowest ground, as evaporation and snow on a mountain clearly demonstrate.
A book is far more than what the author wrote; it is everything you can imagine and read into it as well.
An argument that needs repetition is rarely convincing.
Expansion of spirit, mind, and heart, not the imparting of skills, is the soul of education.
Control is antithetical to life but compatible with death. Why then do we so desperately seek it?