Charles B Handy Quotes & Sayings

Creativity needs a bit of untidiness. Make everything too neat and there is no room for experiment. — Charles Handy

Should ever anything be missed - milk, coals, umbrellas, brandy - the cat's pitched into with a boot or anything that's handy. — Charles Stuart Calverley

We learn by reflecting on what has happened. The process seldom works in reverse, although most educational processes assume that it does. We hope that we can teach people how to live before they live, or how to manage before they manage. — Charles Handy

An economy that adds value through information, ideas, and intelligence-the Three I Economy-offers a way out of the apparent clash between material growth and environmental resources. — Charles Handy

I believe that a lot of our striving after the symbols and levers of success is due to a basic insecurity, a need to prove ourselves. That done, grown up at last, we are free to stop pretending. — Charles Handy

Purpose, pattern, and people, the three P's at the heart of life. — Charles Handy

It is tempting to call for better leadership, but we probably expect too much from the leaders of the nations. Those nations are too big, the connections not strong enough, the commitment to the future not long enough. It is better to look smaller, to our now-smaller organisations, to local communities and cities, to families and clusters of friends, to small networks of portfolio people with time to give to something bigger than themselves. We have to fashion our own directions in our own places. — Charles Handy

Talent comes with an individual name tag. — Charles Handy

The future is not inevitable. We can influence it, if we know what we want it to be. — Charles Handy

You have to stand outside the box to see how the box can be re-designed. — Charles Handy

Creativity is born of chaos, even if it is somewhat difficult to glimpse the possibilities in the midst of the confusion. — Charles Handy

The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide. — Charles Handy

Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture that may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can. — Charles Handy

A consultant solves other peoples problems. I could never do that. I want to help other people solve their own problems. — Charles Handy

Learning is experience understood in tranquility. — Charles Handy

We are all prisoners of our past. It is hard to think of things except in the way we have always thought of them. But that solves no problems and seldom changes anything. — Charles Handy

We need to have faith in the future to make sense of the present. — Charles Handy

The world by and large has to be reinvented. — Charles Handy

Change is only another word for growth, another synonym for learning. — Charles Handy

Presidents, leaders, to be effective have to represent the whole to the parts and to the world outside. They may live in the centre but they must not be the centre. To reinforce the common sense they must be a constant teacher, ever travelling, ever talking, ever listening, the chief missionary of the common cause. — Charles Handy

Profit has to be a means to other ends rather than an end in itself. — Charles Handy

In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property. — Charles Handy

The best learning happens in real life with real problems and real people and not in classrooms. — Charles Handy

The companies that survive longest are the one's that work out what they uniquely can give to the world not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul. — Charles Handy

Citizenship is the chance to make a difference to the place where you belong. — Charles Handy

Home is the first school for us all, a school with no fixed curriculum, no quality control, no examinations, no teacher training — Charles Handy

Instead of a national curriculum for education, what is really needed is an individual curriculum for every child. — Charles Handy

The market is a mechanism for sorting the efficient from the inefficient, it is not a substitute for responsibility. — Charles Handy

A leader shapes and shares a vision, which gives point to the work of others. — Charles Handy

Forget land, buildings, or machines-the real source of wealth today is intelligence, applied intelligence. We talk glibly of "intellectual property" without taking on board what it really means. It isn't just patent rights and brand names; it is the brains of the place. — Charles Handy