Quotes on Change and Organizations

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two

Octavio Paz 1914-1998, Mexican poet and essayist

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit

Henry Brooks Adams 1838-1919, American writer and historian

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change



Charles Darwin 1809-1882, English biologist and father of the evolution theory

One of the things I learn when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself I could not change others

Nelson Mandela 1918-, Nobel prize winner, South African statesman and President since 1994

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly

Henri L. Bergson 1859-1941, French philosopher, 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature

It's been a long time coming. But I know a change is gonna come

Sam Cooke 1931-1964, American musician

Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time

Masaaki Imai, Japanese change and quality management guru

Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet

Henry Mintzberg 1939- , renowned academic and writer on business and management

Constant dripping hollows out a stone

Lucretius 98-55 BC, Roman poet

Social organizations are flagrantly open systems in that the input of energies and the conversion of output into further energetic input consists of transactions between the organization and its environment

Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything

John Kenneth Galbraith

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me

Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, sixteenth American president

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules

Alan Bennett

Change is good - you go first

Kenneth F Murphy 1955-, former SVP HR of Altria Group and writer

People don't resist change. They resist being changed!

Peter Senge, management writer famous for the notion of the learning organization

All things are in a state of flux

Heraclites 540BC-480BC, Greek Philosopher

Be the change you want to see in the world

Mahatma Gandhi 1869-1948, political and spiritual leader of India

Nothing is permanent, but change

Heraclitus 535–475 BCE, pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher