Charles Handy Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be killed, boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behaviour.

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

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

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

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

Charles Handy
The sobering thought is that individuals and societies are not, in the end, remembered for how they made their money, but for how they spent it.

Charles Handy
There is as far as I know, no example in history, of any state voluntarily ceding power from the centre to its constituent parts.

Charles Handy
The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

Charles Handy
If economic progress means that we become anonymous cogs in some great machine, then progress is an empty promise.

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

Charles Handy
To learn anything other than the stuff you find in books, you need to be able to experiment, to make mistakes, to accept feedback, and to try again. It doesn't matter whether you are learning to ride a bike or starting a new career, the cycle of experiment, feedback, and new experiment is always there.

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

Charles Handy
We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.

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

Charles Handy
Why don't we teach our children in school what they are? We should say to them, 'You are unique... you have the capacity for anything. You are a marvel'.

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
The moment will arrive when you are comfortable with who you are, and what you are- bald or old or fat or poor, successful or struggling- when you don't feel the need to apologize for anything or to deny anything. To be comfortable in your own skin is the beginning of strength.

Charles Handy
A good team is a great place to be, exciting, stimulating, supportive, successful. A bad team is horrible, a sort of human prison.

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

Charles Handy