Thinking In Systems Quotes

“The more output that is produced, the more can be invested to make new capital. This is a reinforcing loop, like the birth loop for a population. The investment fraction is equivalent to the fertility. The greater the fraction of its output a society invests, the faster its capital stock will grow.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“System: A set of elements or parts that is coherently organized and interconnected in a pattern or structure that produces a characteristic set of behaviors, often classified as its “function” or “purpose.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is “true,” that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“the competitive exclusion principle.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“It is the consistent behavior pattern over a long period of time that is the first hint of the existence of a feedback loop.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“Most individual and institutional decisions are designed to regulate the levels in stocks.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“The presence of stocks allows inflows and outflows to be independent of each other and temporarily out of balance with each other.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“we sometimes miss seeing that we can fill a bathtub not only by increasing the inflow rate, but also by decreasing the outflow rate.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“The least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system's behavior.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“The structure of a commons system makes selfish behavior much more convenient and profitable than behavior that is responsible to the whole community and to the future.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

“Serious problems have been solved by focusing on external agents—preventing smallpox, increasing food production, moving large weights and many people rapidly over long distances. Because they are embedded in larger systems, however, some of our “solutions” have created further problems. And some problems, those most rooted in the internal structure of complex systems, the real messes, have refused to go away.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“The more I practice piano, the more pleasure I get from the sound, and so the more I play the piano, which gives me more practice.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“You can see some things through the lens of the human eye, other things through the lens of a microscope, others through the lens of a telescope, and still others through the lens of systems theory. Everything seen through each kind of lens is actually there. Each way of seeing allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“Because we bump into reinforcing loops so often, it is handy to know this shortcut: The time it takes for an exponentially growing stock to double in size, the “doubling time,” equals approximately 70 divided by the growth rate (expressed as a percentage).
Example: If you put $100 in the bank at 7% interest per year, you will double your money in 10 years (70 ÷ 7 = 10). If you get only 5% interest, your money will take 14 years to double.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer

“We can’t control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer

“Carter also was trying to deal with a flood of illegal immigrants from Mexico. He suggested that nothing could be done about that immigration as long as there was a great gap in opportunity and living standards between the United States and Mexico. Rather than spending money on border guards and barriers, he said, we should spend money helping to build the Mexican economy, and we should continue to do so until the immigration stopped.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“A system consists of elements, interconnections, and a purpose. Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer

“The Earth was formed whole and continuous in the Universe, without lines.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer

“[Language] can serve as a medium through which we create new understandings and new realities as we begin to talk about them. In fact, we don’t talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“If you define the goal of a society as GNP, that society will do its best to produce GNP. It will not produce welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency unless you define a goal and regularly measure and report the state of welfare, equity, justice, or efficiency. The world would be a different place if instead of competing to have the highest per capita GNP, nations competed to have the highest per capita stocks of wealth with the lowest throughput, or the lowest infant mortality, or the greatest political freedom, or the cleanest environment, or the smallest gap between the rich and the poor.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity. — Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“A system is a set of things—people, cells, molecules, or whatever—interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. . . . Managers do not solve problems, they manage messes. —RUSSELL ACKOFF,”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“The limits on a growing system may be temporary or permanent. The system may find ways to get around them for a short while or a long while, but eventually there must come some kind of accommodation, the system adjusting to the constraint, or the constraint to the system, or both to each other. In that accommodation come some interesting dynamics.

Whether the constraining balancing loops originate from a renewable or nonrenewable resource makes some difference, not in whether growth can continue forever, but in how growth is likely to end.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking In Systems: A Primer

“It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“The world peeps, squawks, bangs, and thunders at many frequencies all at once. What is a significant delay depends—usually—on which set of frequencies you’re trying to understand.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“My word processor has spell-check capability, which lets me add words that didn’t originally come in its comprehensive dictionary. It’s interesting to see what words I had to add when writing this book: feedback, throughput, overshoot, self-organization, sustainability.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“and if they have no hope of winning, could get frustrated enough to destroy the playing field.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“Here we meet a very important feature. It would seem as if this were circular reasoning; profits fell because investment fell, and investment fell because profits fell. —Jan Tinbergen,5 Jan Tinbergen,”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer