Quotes About System

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.

To ask whether elements, interconnections, or purposes are most important in a system is to ask an unsystemic question. All are essential. All interact. All have their roles. But the least obvious part of the system, its function or purpose, is often the most crucial determinant of the system's behavior.

A system consists of elements, interconnections, and a purpose. Changing elements usually has the least effect on the system.

If the desired system state is good education, measuring that goal by the amount

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.

A diverse system with multiple pathways and redundancies is more stable and less vulnerable to external shock than a uniform system with little diversity.

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.

The behavior of a system cannot be known just by knowing the elements of which the system is made. PART ONE System Structure and Behavior

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.

The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole.

Therefore the "real" system may not respond as forcefully or successfully as does the World3 system. The model's perfectly working market and smooth, successful technologies (with no surprising side effects) are also very optimistic.

Resilience is a measure of a system's ability to survive and persist within a variable environment. The opposite of resilience is brittleness or rigidity.

QUESTIONS FOR TESTING THE VALUE OF A MODEL Are the driving factors likely to unfold this way? If they did, would the system react this way? What is driving the driving factors?

System structure is the source of system behavior. System behavior reveals itself as a series of events over time.

The only way to fix a system that is laid out poorly is to rebuild it, if you can.

Physical structure is crucial in a system, but is rarely a leverage point, because changing it is rarely quick or simple. The leverage point is in proper design in the first place.

This is the new psychosocial theory of everything: our early emotional stories determine the body and brain's operating system and how well they will be able to guard our optimal physical and emotional health all of our adult lives.

We need to drive down requirements for the schools. In the 19th century, we increased the quality of the schools by higher education saying, 'You can't come in unless you have these skills, unless you've taken these courses.' We did that in Wisconsin when I was there, it helped to transform the secondary school system.

The American system for building wealth has always taken wealth away from black Americans and given it to white American - beginning when enslaved blacks were stripped of their humanity and counted as the property that became the white wealth that still benefits white Americans and corporations today.

the joint tax return system, under which most married couples file their taxes together, offers the greatest benefits to households where one spouse contributes much less than the other to household income.

A system designed to build white wealth will ultimately not work to build black wealth.

Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

It's easy to cry "bug" when the truth is that you've got a complex system and sometimes it takes a while to get all the components to co-exist peacefully.

A person who believes in a particular conceptual system believes that everything can be explained by reference to that conceptual system. Whereas the artist sees the pattern and feels the mystery that looms beyond the pattern. […] Great art is pattern over mystery, it is juggling words over whirlpools of silence.