Donella Meadows Quotes

Quotes about:

• The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological - social - psychological - economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.

  Donella Meadows

  Simple, World, Problem

  "Whole Earth Models and Systems". "The CoEvolution Quarterly", p. 98 - 108, Summer 1982.

  18 Copy quote

• The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labour, or technology. It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right

  Donella Meadows

  Nature, Future, Technology

  63 Copy quote

• We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them!

  Donella Meadows

  Figures

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.170, Chelsea Green Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.

  Donella Meadows

  Purpose, World, Boundaries

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.97, Chelsea Green Publishing

  13 Copy quote

• The first commandment of economics is: Grow. Grow forever. Companies get bigger. National economies need to swell by a certain percent each year. People should want more, make more, earn more, spend more - ever more.
  The first commandment of the Earth is: enough. Just so much and no more. Just so much soil. Just so much water. Just so much sunshine. Everything born of the Earth grows to its appropriate size and then stops.

  Donella Meadows

  Sunshine, Years, People

  10 Copy quote

• The sustainability revolution will be organic. It will arise from the visions, insights, experiments and actions of billions of people. The burden of making it happen is not on the shoulders of any one person or group. No one will get the credit, but everyone can contribute.

  Donella Meadows

  People, Vision, Groups

  Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows (2004). “Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update”, p.269, Chelsea Green Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.

  Donella Meadows

  Despair, News, Too Much

  9 Copy quote

• 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, to a large extent, causes its own behavior.

  Donella Meadows

  Cells, People, Molecules

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.2, Chelsea Green Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• Since the Earth is finite, and we will have to stop expanding sometime, should we do it before or after nature's diversity is gone?

  Donella Meadows

  Diversity, Gone, Earth

  9 Copy quote

• No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

  Donella Meadows

  Justice, Democracy, Speak

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.177, Chelsea Green Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• Speak the truth.
  Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,
  and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power.
  Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence.
  All growth is not good.
  The environment is a necessity, not a luxury.
  There is such a thing as enough.

  Donella Meadows

  Luxury, Growth, Purpose

  14 Copy quote

• A good leader sets the right goals, gets things moving, and helps us to discover that we already know what to do.

  Donella Meadows

  Moving, Goal, Leader

  9 Copy quote

• You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.

  Donella Meadows

  Stupid, Atmosphere, Environmental

  18 Copy quote

• We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock.

  Donella Meadows

  Mistake, Thinking, Ecosystems

  6 Copy quote

• Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.

  Donella Meadows

  Self, Long, Innovation

  Donella H. Meadows (2009). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.160, Earthscan

  4 Copy quote

• Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.

  Donella Meadows

  Zoos, Needs, National Parks

  13 Copy quote

• A vision should be judged by the clarity of its values, not the clarity of its implementation path [in Mediated Modeling page 43]

  Donella Meadows

  Vision, Pages, Path

  7 Copy quote

• Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not distort, delay, or sequester information

  Donella Meadows

  Delay, Information, Commandments

  5 Copy quote

• It is not OK in this culture to talk to friends about causes you believe in, much less to ask them to join in. It's OK to blast perfect strangers with crass messages every hour of the day, but it's a tinge embarrassing, it brings up some shyness, it seems an intrusion, it risks rejection to share real heartfelt commitments. It's easier to share our cynicism with strangers than our dreams with friends.

  Donella Meadows

  Friends, Dream, Real

  8 Copy quote

• It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

  Donella Meadows

  Impact, Space, People

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.165, Chelsea Green Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• The actions of my government are not bearable. They devastate our natural resources and deprive our people. The politicians speak piously while practicing greed and divisiveness; they care nothing for the nation. I want to do more than withdraw my support. I want to tar and feather them.

  Donella Meadows

  Government, People, Support

  10 Copy quote

• Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable.

  Donella Meadows

  Models, Complexes

  "Elements of the system dynamics method". Book by Jorgen Randers, p. 27, 1980.

  9 Copy quote

• Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent.

  Donella Meadows

  Science, Agreement, Climate

  22 Copy quote

• A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.

  Donella Meadows

  Environmental, President, Climate

  16 Copy quote

• I call the transformed world toward which we can move ‘sustainable,’ by which I mean a great deal more than a world that merely sustains itself unchanged. I mean a world that evolves, as life on earth has evolved for three billion years, toward ever greater diversity, elegance, beauty, self-awareness, interrelationship, and spiritual realization.

  Donella Meadows

  Spiritual, Moving, Mean

  6 Copy quote

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