Donella Meadows

"Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways."

"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…"

"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 …"

"Whenever we see a growing entity, whether it be a population, a corporation, a bank account, a rumor, an epidemic, or sales of a new product, we look for the reinforcing loops that are driving it and …"

"Even people within systems don't often recognize what whole-system goal they are serving. "To make profits", most corporations would say, but that's just a rule, a necessary condition to stay in the g…"

"Bounded rationality means that people make quite reasonable decisions based on the information they have. But they don't have perfect information, especially about more distant parts of the system. We…"

"These examples confuse effort with result, one of the most common mistakes of this kind is designing systems around the wrong goal. Maybe the worst mistake this kind has been the adoption of the GNP a…"

"No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. 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…"