“A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.”
“If you never change your mind, why have one?”
“We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.”
“You do not go out into the street in your underwear, although usually you are wearing underwear. The underwear is not visible but it is there all the time. It is the same with concepts. They are there. They underlie practical things we do- even when we are not conscious of them.”
“(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.”
“If you understand the system you can design appropriate action.”
“Unfortunately, our existing traditional thinking habits insist that you must attack something and show it to be bad before you can suggest a change. It is more difficult to acknowledge that something is excellent and then to ask for change because although it is excellent, it is not enough.”