Explore Quotes by 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.

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

Life can only be understood backwards but you have to live it forward. You can only do that by stepping into uncertainty and by trying, within this uncertainty, to create your own islands of security....The new security will be a belief that ...if this doesn't work out you could do something else. You are your own security.

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

Change is only another word for growth, another synonym for learning.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Talent comes with an individual name tag.

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.

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'.