Margaret J. Wheatley Quotes

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?

Real, sustainable community change requires the initiative and engagement of community members.

When your focus is social change and not financial change, why wouldn't you want to share that openly? Innovation only succeeds when it's shared.

Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change.

You don't have to become Mother Teresa to make an impact in the world. But nothing can be achieved if, at the very least, we are not talking about it.

I'm an agent of change all day long, and I want to meet other people like that.

Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.

We all need to stand together and be a part of creating the future we hope to see.

Most important about what Ashoka is doing is that they make people believe that change is possible. That belief can go viral.

I want society to feel they are part of a process of change.

I think people often forget how powerful they are. Sometimes it just takes one voice to save a life. When we speak up we can not only change a life or save a life, but we can also make it possible for other people to speak up. If we harness the collective power of people's voices around America to address the opioid epidemic, I have no doubt that we can overcome it.

We just have to convince other people that they have power. This is what they can do by participating to make change, not only in their community, but many times changing in their own lives. Once they participate, they get their sense of power.

I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.

It is the government's strong desire to empower this fabric, this social fabric of our society where faith-based programs large and small feel empowered, encouraged, and welcomed into changing lives.

In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.

Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidently anticipate utopia. Both are wrong.

The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life.

Are we just going to be a crowd of voices, or are we going to be a crowd of hands?

Every revolution begins as consciousness because some group of people has to imagine change. You have to have the idea of change or at least have a hope before you can proceed. And that stage goes very quickly because a contagion of consciousness is within your control. But when you get to the stage of institutional change, it becomes a much slower process.

Very great change starts from very small conversations, held among people who care.

Hope is born of participation in hopeful solutions.

[A]ll change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about.

It is so important not to let ourselves off the hook or to become apathetic or cynical by telling ourselves that nothing works or makes a difference. Every day, light your small candle.... The inaction and actions of many human beings over a long time contributed to the crises our children face, and it is the action and struggle of many human beings over time that will solve them-with God's help. So every day, light your small candle.

History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place.

The rhythm of being an activist today involves a pretty simple rhythm. You have to open your eyes to the reality before you. You have to look and see.