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Because the Systems Age is teleologically oriented, it is preoccupied with systems that are goal-seeking or purposeful, that is, systems that can display choice of either means or ends, or both. It is interested in purely mechanical systems only.

— Russell L. Ackoff

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Philosophy

More quotes by Russell L. Ackoff

When a business is bought, it is bought for its potential—for its future, not its past.

Re-Creating the Corporation (1999)

A mission statement should define the business that the organization wants to be in, not necessarily what it is in.

Re-Creating the Corporation (1999)

Over time, every way of thinking generates important problems that it cannot solve.

Re-Creating the Corporation (1999)

The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds.

Ackoff (2007)

The lower the rank of managers, the more they know about fewer things. The higher the rank of managers, the less they know about many things.

p. 2 cited in: Gregory H. Watson (2010)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Russell L. Ackoff (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.