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

Donella Meadows

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Donella Meadows
Age: 59 †
Born: 1941
Born: March 13
Died: 2001
Died: February 20
Chemist
Environmental Scientist
Environmental Writer
Teacher
Writer
Elgin
Illinois
Donella Hager Meadows
Donella H. Meadows
Figure
Dance
Figures
Control
Systems

More quotes by Donella Meadows

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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
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A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor
Donella Meadows
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I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.
Donella Meadows
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The climate continues to deteriorate.
Donella Meadows
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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
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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
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The grand jury's job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial.
Donella Meadows
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Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent.
Donella Meadows
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The European nations take climate change very seriously.
Donella Meadows
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You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere.
Donella Meadows
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Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable.
Donella Meadows
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A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate.
Donella Meadows
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Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have detailed plans to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 to 50 percent.
Donella Meadows
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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
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How do we appreciate the good without letting it be the enemy of the perfect? How do we keep a step in the right direction from becoming a stopping point? How do we get beyond shades of insipid light green?
Donella Meadows
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What Clinton did with Lewinsky was despicable but was no threat to the nation. That he lied about it repeatedly and to the public is a reason for us to cease to trust him and for him to resign.
Donella Meadows
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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
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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
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Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park
Donella Meadows
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Mesarovic and Pestel are critical of the Forrester-Meadows world view, which is that of a homogeneous system with a fully predetermined evolution in time once the initial conditions are specified.
Donella Meadows