“Turbulence is the beginning of a fruitful process of transformation.”

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Two

Source: The Causal Texture of Organizational Environments (1963), p. 30.

Source: Systems Thinking, Systems Practice, 1981, p. 223 as cited in: Gillian Ragsdell, Daune West, Jennifer Wilby (2002) Systems Theory and Practice in the Knowledge Age. p. 82. In the original quote Checkland summarised his earlier work with Smyth published in 1976.

Section 9
Letter to a Priest (1951)
Context: Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and she has gone about uprooting the other continents from the sixteenth century onwards. Missionary zeal has not Christianized Africa, Asia and Oceania, but has brought these territories under the cold, cruel and destructive domination of the white race, which has trodden down everything. It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 377

Preface To The first edition, p. ix
The Political Economy Of Growth (1957)

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy