Dee Hock Quotes

“The essence of community, its heart and soul, is the non-monetary exchange of value; things we do and share because we care for others, and for the good of the place.”

— Dee Hock

“Make a careful list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others, ever.
Make another list of things done for you that you loved. Do them for others, always.”

— Dee Hock

“Children are easily taught, for they readily accept and believe lies told by their elders.”

— Dee Hock

“The most common lesson of history is that the butchery of one mass of people by another is, in the minds of the butchers, sanctioned by their god.”

— Dee Hock

Nothing can be more violent and merciless than a group of true believers, no matter what they choose to believe.

— Dee Hock

“We never fully understand what we have been told until we experience it. Learning not embedded in experience is forever crippled. Unfortunately, our present society is schooled, not educated.”

— Dee Hock

“Certainty is the place where questions go to die.”

— Dee Hock

“The ultimate profanity is to invoke any deity in support of death or destruction in any form, particularly war.”

— Dee Hock

“Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”

— Dee Hock

“It is impossible to conceive of idea apart from life. Every living thing has an idea of life, and every idea must have a living thing in which to arise.”

— Dee Hock

“The greatest writers have no purpose but to incite in the minds of each reader the highest and best thought of which they are capable.”

— Dee Hock

“Accomplishment is one part commitment, one part ability, one part persistence, and one part circumstance. Circumstance we cannot control. The rest we might.”

— Dee Hock

“What is a question but a moment of discontent in pursuit of understanding? What is an answer but a moment of illusion in our flight from ignorance?”

— Dee Hock

“Of this we can be certain: at no time, in no place, and in no way is anything in the universe separate, independent, or unrelated.”

— Dee Hock

“The relational aspect of all things is the music that sets life and the universe dancing.”

— Dee Hock

“Don't preach. Don't teach. Don't judge. Take a loved child by the hand and explore something fascinating together.”

— Dee Hock

“One of the more fascinating things about human behavior is the degree to which we conceive of countless boundaries that constrain and inhibit us in extraordinary ways, even though they are nothing but mental constructs that, in reality, do not exist.”

— Dee Hock

“Only an unimaginative man would think that mechanistic, command-and-control organizations could ever produce an equitable, enduring, free society. Only a thoughtless man would create them. Only an arrogant man would run them. Only a cruel man would perpetuate them.”

— Dee Hock

“No one can teach us the joy of living; we are endowed with it. So why are we continually waiting for the lecture?”

— Dee Hock

“Life is so uncertain that it is far better and more joyous to play your way through it than to plan or pray your way through it.”

— Dee Hock

What we call originality is no more than ignorance of antecedents.

— Dee Hock

“The disgruntled are abundant among those who are idle, and to be idle is a matter of choice.”

— Dee Hock

“Reality cannot be captured by language-not even the language of mathematics-since all language, by its very nature, is man-made, self-referent ambiguity.”

— Dee Hock

“Religion claims we must obey the mandates of God and clergy can tell us what they are. Science claims we must obey the laws of nature and scientists can tell us what they are. Both claims are absurdly pretentious.”

— Dee Hock

“Life is not about control. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced.”

— Dee Hock

“If you don't understand that you work for your mislabeled 'subordinates', then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.”

— Dee Hock

“Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality.”

— Dee Hock

“It won't do away with hierarchy totally, but the principal leader will be the person who most exemplifies the kind of organization and behavior required who is best able to create the conditions such organizations require.”

— Dee Hock

“Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.”

— Dee Hock

“Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.”

— Dee Hock

Language was a huge expansion of that capacity to deal with information.

— Dee Hock

“The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out.”

— Dee Hock

“Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.”

— Dee Hock

“Preserve substance; modify form; know the difference.”

— Dee Hock

“Success follows those adept at preserving the substance of the past by clothing it in the forms of the future.”

— Dee Hock

“If you go back to the first single-cell form of life, it clearly possessed the capacity to receive, to utilize, to store, to transform, and to transmit information.”

— Dee Hock

We are at the very point in time when a 400-year old age is dying and another is struggling to be born - a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community and ethics such as the world has never know, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed.

— Dee Hock

“We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and transmit data - the lowest cognitive form - has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.”

— Dee Hock

“Making good judgments when one has complete data, facts, and knowledge is not leadership - it's bookkeeping”

— Dee Hock

“People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.”

— Dee Hock

“We don't have to remain in this radically destructive mind-set and institutional-set. We can change, and the natural order of things could emerge in all of our societal organizations-government, commerce, religion-it's right there, waiting to happen. I often tell people that every mind is like a room in an old house, stuffed with very old furniture. Take any space in your mind and empty it of your old conceptions and new ones will rush in, good or bad. So change is more a getting rid of rather than an adding to or an acquiring.”

— Dee Hock

“We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born.”

— Dee Hock

“The reason is still difficult to explain, but it is not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, "Business is not what your life is about. Founding VISA and being its chief executive officer is something you must do, but it's only preparatory."”

— Dee Hock

“Failure is not to be feared. It is from failure that most growth comes.”

— Dee Hock

“An organization's success has more to do with clarity of shared purpose, common principles and strength of belief in them than to assets, expertise, operating ability or management competence, important as they may be.”

— Dee Hock

You learn nothing form your successes except to think too much of yourself. It is from failure that all growth comes, provided you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and then try again.

— Dee Hock

“Particularity and separability are infirmities of the mind, not characteristics of the universe.”

— Dee Hock

“Only fools worship their tools”

— Dee Hock

“If you think you can't, why think”

— Dee Hock

“Heaven is purpose, principle, and people. Purgatory is paper and procedure. Hell is rules and regulations.”

— Dee Hock