Quotes from Bernard A. Lietaer

Several decades of research have shown that learning retention depends less on the person or the topics involved than on the delivery system. What is striking is that our traditional educational system commonly uses the two least effective methods available: lecturing and reading, through which, respectively, only 5 and 10 percent of what is taught is retained. At the other end of the spectrum, an impressive 90 percent retention rate applies to whatever one teaches others!

Set up a TimeBank Rotating Loan Club wherever anyone who has a cause, a dream, a vision of what they would like to change or what they would like to see happen could get a time commitment of 90 days to make that happen. Like Rotating Loan Clubs, everyone would have a chance to do that: I'll help with your cause for 90 days if you will help with mine. Imagine the possibilities.

Success, in the words of Winston Churchill, "consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." The greatest barriers to success so far have been the fear of failure and the failure to learn from mistakes.

For the most part, our educational systems remain rooted in the outdated and fractured Prussian model, which teaches people to take orders rather than think for themselves. Paired with the technological advances in communications, we are left swimming in an ever-engulfing sea of facts, unable to find meaning, never mind wisdom.

Surprisingly straightforward in their clarity and simplicity, Lietaer and Dunne point out that money is a human invention. Our current monetary system was designed some 300 years ago, during an era that knew nothing of natural limits and had a completely different set of objectives and priorities. It's a tool that should be serving us, rather than being our master. And since it is a man-made construct, it can be re-thought, re-imagined, and redesigned.