Peter Block Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

Anecdotes, personal stories, reminiscences, like biblical parables, are the medium through which faith is restored. Stories are a form of poetry, and give us a saving image to personally relate to.

Peter Block

We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture.

Peter Block

If you need ownership and responsibility from core workers, patriarchy can't get you there.

Peter Block

How many times have we brought in an outsider to tell us what we already knew?

Peter Block

If you believe that saying no will get you shot, well, what a fine way to go.

Peter Block

We must act as if our institutions are ours to create, our learning is ours to define, our leadership we seek is ours to become.

Peter Block

We are reluctant to let go of the belief that if I am to care for something I must control it.

Peter Block

The artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience.

Peter Block

It is a misuse of our power to take responsibility for solving problems that belong to others.

Peter Block

The choice to worry about why we are doing something more than how we do something is risky business.

Peter Block

Every parent's deepest wish is that their children are self sufficient, happy, and able to live a full life.

Peter Block

The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.

Peter Block

We need to tell people not to be helpful. Trying to be helpful and giving advise are really ways to control others.... Advice, recommendations, and obvious actions are exactly what increase the likelihood that tomorrow will be just like yesterday.

Peter Block

Change from the top down happens at the will and whim of those below.

Peter Block

Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.

Peter Block

Transformation comes more from pursuing profound questions than seeking practical answers.

Peter Block

The goal is to balance a life that works with a life that counts.

Peter Block

As long as we wish for safety, we will have difficulty pursuing what matters.

Peter Block

Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive.

Peter Block