Quotes from Margaret J. Wheatley

In Yellowstone National Park, human-imposed stability thwarted for many years the natural process of small fires, which regularly clean out brush and dead trees. The result was a fragile equilibrium completely vulnerable to the cataclysm of fire that destroyed large areas of the park. The attempt to manage for stability and to enforce an unnatural equilibrium always leads to far-reaching destruction. The

Life offers us this great gift of self-organization, how we can be held in the basin of shared meaning and, within that, exercise individual freedom. It is such a shame to waste it on fear and doubt. Or to seek to contain and control it.

Sociologist James Evan reviewed citations in more than thirty-four million articles published in academic journals and noted how the number of different citations declined after the advent of search engines. These information-filtering tools, he observed, "serve as amplifiers of popularity, quickly establishing and then continually reinforcing a consensus about what information is important and what isn't."36

A culture focused on individual freedom can only result in narcissism, polarization, conflict, estrangement, and loneliness. What is the meaning of life when it's all about me?

We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order. This is no surprise, given that for most of its written history, leadership has been defined in terms of its control functions.

possible if we spoke to those we most fear. I hope we can reclaim conversation as our route back to each other, and as the path forward to a hopeful future. It only requires imagination and courage and faith. These are qualities possessed by everyone. Now is the time to exercise them to their fullest.

It's been said thousands of times, in all faiths and philosophies. Know thyself. What may be less clear in these wise expressions is the reason we learn to know ourselves: we develop a knowledge of self so that we can give up the self and serve others.

Wherever you're working is where you take a stand. You don't have to go looking for new places, other issues, compelling causes.

We can't change this world, but we can change ourselves so that we can be of service to this world.

Focus on serving others. ... No matter what is going on around us, we can attend to the people in front of us, to the issues confronting us and there, we offer what we can. We can offer insight and compassion. We can be present. We can stay and not flee. We can be exemplars of the best human qualities. That is a life well lived, even if we didn't save the world.

A Warrior for the Human Spirit is a decent human being who aspires to be of service in an indecent, inhumane time.

The world thus appears as a complicated tissue of events, in which connections

We could have been anything we wanted, yet our free-floating individualism has taken us far from community, contribution or connection, the very things that truly give life meaning and purpose.