Structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner.

A learning organization is an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future.

You cannot force commitment, what you can do…You nudge a little here, inspire a little there, and provide a role model. Your primary influence is the environment you create.

All great things have small beginnings.

The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization.

The world is made of Circles And we think in straight Lines

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than static ‘snapshots.’

The key to success isn't just thinking about what we are doing but doing something about what we are thinking.

The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We call this gap creative tension.

A shared vision is not an idea...it is rather, a force in people's hearts...at its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question 'What do we want to create?

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

Of course, there were other sorts of literature -- theoretical, self-referencial, lachrymosely autobiographical -- but they were just dry wanks.

I do enjoy doing pantomime at Christmas. If I didn't do it, I'd feel as though I was missing something.

My kids don't have a trust fund, they have a debt fund. And when I die, they're $4 million in the hole.

I am turned into a sort of machine for observing facts and grinding out conclusions.

I see something that has to be done and I organize it.

We have to leave everything we have been, a perceiver, "I" as an individual. That is enlightenment.

I would much rather be found guilty of making a serious mistake in judgment, than to be accused of being even a little bit insincere.

When people ask me what on earth I want to keep two cats for I tell them I keep them to do my resting for me.

Don't hunt what you can't kill

More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.