Quotes About Understanding

We know a tremendous amount about how the world works, but not nearly enough. Our knowledge is amazing; our ignorance even more so. We can improve our understanding, but we can't make it perfect.

stop looking for who's to blame; instead you'll start asking, "What's the system?" The concept of feedback opens up the idea that a system can cause its own behavior.

If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves. . . . There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding. —ROBERT PIRSIG, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The systems-thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems and • hone our abilities to understand parts, • see interconnections, • ask "what-if " questions about possible future behaviors, and • be creative and courageous about system redesign.

If information-based relationships are hard to see, functions or purposes are even harder. A system's function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

It is to "get" at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny.

You think that because you understand "one" that you must therefore understand "two" because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand "and." -Sufi teaching story

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

we don't talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about

To discuss them properly, it is necessary somehow to use a language that shares some of the same properties as the phenomena under discussion. Pictures work for this language better than words, because you can see all the parts of a picture at once.

President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately, he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn't understand feedback.

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.

The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

Remember—all system diagrams are simplifications of the real world.

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

As we try to imagine restructured rules and what our behavior would be under them, we come to understand the power of rules. They are high leverage points. Power over the rules is real power.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated. —POUL ANDERSON

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.

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.

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.

Vision involves more than just seeing or being shown.

Not all tongues that wag cohabit with a brain.

It's a wisdom that comes from seeing how things work. Things you want to happen always take a long time.' She pointed one little finger at the meech dragon and shook it in his face. 'You may read books and know bunches, but I have lived life longer than you.

The asanas are useful maps to explore yourself, but they are not the territory.