Learning Organization Quotes
Top 30 Learning Organization Quotes
No 1 (Best quote!)
Once you stop learning, you start dying.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955),
German-born American scientist, pictured right.
No 2
I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand.
- Confucius (551-479 BC) Chinese philosopher,
pictured right.
No 3
Success is a lousy teacher.
-Bill Gates (1955- ), co-founder of Microsoft, pictured
right.
Gates also comments:
It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
No 4
To create the future, a company must unlearn some of its past.
- Gary Hamel, pictured right above, and
C. K. Prahalad, pictured right, in
Competing for the
Future (1996)
No 5
Thinking the unthinkable is a way of getting the wheel of learning moving.
- Charles Handy, pictured right,in The Age of Unreason (1989)
No 6
Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire (definition
of a learning organization).
- Peter Senge, pictured right, in The Fifth Discipline
(1990).
No 7
The inferior man seeks to put the blame on other persons, the superior man seeks the error within himself.
- Lao Tzu (c604-c531 BC), Chinese
philosopher, pictured right.
Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), pictured right, the
American management expert, agrees:
Nothing stultifies one more than being blamed.
No 8
Learning is the discovery that something is possible.
- Fritz Perls (1893-1970)
German-born American psychotherapist, pictured right.
No 9
There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.
- Henry Ford (1863–1947), American car manufacturer,
pictured right.
Other thinkers also comment:
Any man can make mistakes but only an idiot persists in his error.
- Cicero (106-43 BC), the Roman
philosopher and politician, pictured right.
Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde, pictured right (in his play Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892)
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951), Austrian-born British philosopher, pictured right.
Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow.
- Helen Keller (1880-1968), American
campaigner for the disabled, pictured right.
A failure is not always a mistake; it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real
mistake is to stop trying.
- B.F Skinner (1904-90),
American psychologist, pictured right
No 10
How do you know what you’re doing till you do it?,
(Holden Caulfield in the 1951 novel The
Catcher in the Rye)
- J.D. Salinger (1919-2010), pictured right, American writer.
No 11
When everybody agrees, somebody is not thinking.
- George Patton (1885-1945), American World War Two general, pictured right.
No 12
Some questions don’t have answers which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
- Katharine Graham (1917-2001), boss of the
Washington Post 1963-79, pictured right.
No 13
Leadership creates a commonwealth of learning, and that, in turn is what effective organizations
are
- Warren Bennis ,pictured right above, and Burt
Nanus, pictured right, in Leaders (1985)
No 14
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
-Bill Gates (1955- ), co-founder of Microsoft, pictured
right.
No 15
Test every concept by the question: what sensible difference to anybody will its truth make?
- William James (1842-1910),
American psychologist and philosopher, pictured right.
No 16
We learn better in a free spirit of curiosity than under fear and compulsion.
- St. Augustine (354-430),
Algerian philosopher , pictured right.
No 17
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Mahatma ( Mohandas)
Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian leader and philosopher, pictured right.
No 18
Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. We cannot learn men from books,
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), British Prime
Minister, pictured right.
No 19
Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.
- Confucius (551-479 BC) Chinese philosopher,
pictured right.
No 20
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
(from a 1842 poem Locksley Hall)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92), pictured right, English poet.
No 21
You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war,
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), pictured
right, French leader.
No 22
We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors.
- George Washington (1732-99), pictured right,
American president.
No 23
You always admire what you really don’t understand.
- Blaise Pascal (1623-62),
French mathematician, physicist and philosopher, pictured right.
No 24
A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more.
- Socrates (470-399 BC), Greek philosopher,
pictured right.
No 25
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience.
-Patrick Henry (1736-99), American
politician, pictured right.
No 26
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-William James (1842-1910),
American psychologist and philosopher, pictured right.
No 27
I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed.
- Michael Faraday (1791-1867), English
scientist, pictured right
No 28
He who thinks little, errs much.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519),
Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer, pictured right.
No 29
It is not possible to deal effectively with any subject if it is not discussable and if its undiscussability is
also undiscussable.
- Chris Argyris, pictured right above and Donald
Schön, pictured right, in Organizational Learning II,
1996).
No 30
Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.
- Peter Senge, pictured right, in The Fifth Discipline
(1990).
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