Donella Meadows quotes

Calculating how much carbon is absorbed by which forests and farms is a tricky task, especially when politicians do it. (Donella Meadows)
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. View quote
Donella Meadows
Models can easily become so complex that they are impenetrable, unexaminable, and virtually unalterable. View quote
Donella Meadows
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! View quote
Donella Meadows
Why are they [people] more likely to listen to people who tell them they can't make changes than they are to people who tell them they can? View quote
Donella Meadows
You may be able to fool the voters, but not the atmosphere. View quote
Donella Meadows
Scientists worldwide agree that the reduction needed to stabilize the climate is actually more like 80 percent. View quote
Donella Meadows
A knowledgeable and courageous U.S. president could help enormously in leading the world's nations toward saving the climate. View quote
Donella Meadows
I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest. View quote
Donella Meadows
In 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in the case of Oliver North to permit the release of grand jury evidence, because it had already been so thoroughly leaked. View quote
Donella Meadows
You should issue demerits for tree cutting or the destruction of humus. (Donella Meadows)
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. View quote
Donella Meadows
Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have detailed plans to cut their greenhouse emissions by 20 to 50 percent. View quote
Donella Meadows
The European nations take climate change very seriously. View quote
Donella Meadows
There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president. View quote
Donella Meadows
The climate continues to deteriorate. View quote
Donella Meadows
Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm. View quote
Donella Meadows
There always will be limits to growth. View quote
Donella Meadows
The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole. View quote
Donella Meadows
How is it that one way of seeing the world becomes so widely shared that institutions, technologies, production systems, buildings, cities, become shaped around that way of seeing? View quote
Donella Meadows
When there are long delays in feedback loops, some sort of foresight is essential. (Donella Meadows)
A quantity growing exponentially toward a limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time. View quote
Donella Meadows
In physical, exponentially growing systems, there must be at least one reinforcing loop driving growth and at least one balancing feedback loop constraining growth, because no system can grow forever in a finite environment. View quote
Donella Meadows
Economic theory as derived from Adam Smith assumes first that homo economicus acts with perfect optimality on complete information, and second that when many of the species homo economicus do that, their actions add up to the best possible outcome for everybody. Neither of these assumptions stands up long against the evidence. View quote
Donella Meadows
Like resilience, self-organizazion is often sacrificed for purposes of short-term productivity and stability. View quote
Donella Meadows