“It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.”
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook (1994)
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Peter M. Senge 17
American scientist 1947Related quotes

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

We Want to Build a New China
On New Democracy (1940)
Original: (zh-CN) 我们共产党人,多年以来,不但为中国的政治革命和经济革命而奋斗,而且为中国的文化革命而奋斗;一切这些的目的,在于建设一个中华民族的新社会和新国家。在这个新社会和新国家中,不但有新政治、新经济,而且有新文化。这就是说,我们不但要把一个政治上受压迫、经济上受剥削的中国,变为一个政治上自由和经济上繁荣的中国,而且要把一个被旧文化统治因而愚昧落后的中国,变为一个被新文化统治因而文明先进的中国。一句话,我们要建立一个新中国。建立中华民族的新文化,这就是我们在文化领域中的目的。

Source: What Got You Here Won't Get You There, 2008, p. 125 (in 2010 edition)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 290.

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

“I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win.”
Vince Cable's Murdoch gaffe 'to cost £300,000' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12509829, BBC News, 18 February 2011
2011

Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

Free Culture (2004)
Context: A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written.