True to the name of our business – New Directions – we seek out ideas, tools, and ways of working together that can enable us to create a thriving future distinct from the harmful ways of the past. The following is a compilation of quotes gathered along the way in 2016:
How We See Our World
“We are a community of possibilities, not a community of problems.” – Peter Block
“You can’t see something until you have the right metaphor to let you perceive it.” – Thomas Kuhn
“When you tug at a single thing in the universe, you find it’s attached to everything else.” – John Muir
“Life-enhancing things can happen when we take time to step out of routines and rethink our paths.” – Sir Ken Robinson
How We Connect
“We need not only do things better than we have in the past; we need to link them in smarter and more effective ways.” – David Bornstein
“Listening is something we really have to practice. Our everyday spaces are not set up for listening.” – Krista Tippett
“Resilience isn’t just about buildings and flood plans, it’s about people who know how to support each other.” – Carlos Menchaca
“What is friendship if not learning the song of another’s heart and singing it back to them?” – Maria Popova
Healing Our History and Divisions
“Healing is bringing together that which has been separated.” – Bert Hellinger
“To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism à la carte.” – Ta-Nahisi Coates
“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” – Audre Lorde
“You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children.” – Pablo Casals
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” – Audre Lorde
Courage in How We Work for Change
“Systems thinking can lead us to the edge of what analysis can do and then point beyond to what can and must be done by the human spirit.” – Dana Meadows
“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.” – Rudolf Bahro
“Courage is as contagious as fear.” – Susan Sontag
“Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.” – Atul Gawande
“It is in knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting.” – Simone de Beauvoir
“Teams are better served by training in question development and posing than focusing on communication of established ideas and facts.” – Carol Sanford
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“May we find new ways of working together as relatives
so this world we love
can give way to one even more beautiful.”
– Melissa Nelson