Inspirational quotes that unfortunately aren’t
Famous phrases with false foundations
“Problema cum dictis in instrumentis socialibus suggestis est saepe falsum”. (The problem with quotes on social media platforms is they are often false). - Marcus Aurelius 121-180 CE
Have you ever come across a truly inspirational quote by someone famous that captures and conveys an important insight — only to have that inspiration turn into irritation when you find out they never actually said it?
Over the past 35 years of helping people create future-fit cultures, I’ve been inspired and then irritated by quite a few quotes that unfortunately aren’t.
Here are four of my “favourite” fake quotes — and why I’d dearly love them to be genuine.
Misattributed Quote #1
“The significant problems we face will not be solved at the same level of thinking that created them.” - (not) Albert Einstein. 1
Why I find it inspirational
Organisations fail to create future-fit cultures when key influencers get trapped in their own inevitably incomplete, biased, one-sided, “2D”perspectives.
Key influencers are the few people, unique to each organisation, and not always in the most senior positions, whose mindsets and therefore attitudes and behaviours systemically affect everyone and everything else.
Future-fit cultures emerge from the widespread adoption of 2D3D mindsets that recognise, accept, and operate from the awareness that all any of us ever has is a partial, biased, and one-sided 2D perspective on the bigger picture 3D reality. 2
No one person on their own — by definition — is ever going to be as creative, productive, or insightful as when they combine their creativity, productivity and insights with the complementary capacities of colleagues.
The genuine, eye-opening realisation that “My 2D perspective, when combined with the 2D perspectives of others, is always inevitably richer than my 2D perspective alone” enables sense making, decision making & action taking to become ever more tightly coupled, rapidly and repeatedly iterated, deeply embedded and widely distributed throughout the organisation.
The significant problems we face in our increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world will only be solved by shifting from the 2D level of thinking to the 2D3D level of thinking throughout the organisation.
Misattributed Quote #2
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are”. - (not) The Talmud 3
Why I find it inspirational
The veterinarian sees the pig as a patient.
The farmer sees the same pig as money.
The butcher sees the same pig as meat.
The more deeply ingrained the awareness of being a vet, being a farmer, or being a butcher, the greater the conviction that seeing the patient, seeing the money, or seeing the meat is seeing ‘reality’.
In organisations, Seeing-Being Traps such as “I’m the decision maker”, “I’m the expert”, and “I’m the resource controller” are the #1 personal barrier to creating future-fit cultures of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness. 4
Fortunately the (not) Talmud quote was used by Professor Gareth Morgan when he introduced the pig metaphor at a lecture in Cambridge in 1997, so I now cite him. 5
Misattributed Quote #3
“We must be the change we wish to see in the world”. - (not) M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi 6
Why I find it inspirational
Key influencers may genuinely want their organisations to be innovative and agile.
They may even genuinely recognise that this involves the systemic, organisation-wide adoption of the innovative 2D3D mindsets described above. 7
But it won’t actually happen in practice if they don’t adopt and operate from this mindset themselves and thereby encourage others to do the same.
That’s why Role Modelling is one of the channels through which people pick up the clues, cues, signs, and signals from which they infer “the way we do things round here”. 8
Seven such channels were identified in the mid 1990’s by MIT Sloan School’s Ed Nevis, Helen Vassalo, and my former colleague Joan Lancourt in their major research study of organisational transformations. 9
Misattributed Quote #4
“New ideas go through three phases: first, they’re ridiculed; second, they’re violently opposed; third, they’re accepted as self-evident”. - (not) Arthur Schopenhauer 10
Why I find it inspirational
Anyone who’s successfully guided a truly radical innovation through the minefields, swamplands, and adaptive defences of an established organisation will probably have encountered something like this sequence of responses from an influential individual:
“That’s an absolutely crazy idea” — followed by…
“That’s only going to happen over my dead body” — and eventually…
“I always knew it was a great idea — that’s why I proposed it in the first place”.
A similar sentiment has also been misattributed to Gandhi:
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” 11
There’s no record of Gandhi ever saying this — although a close variant does appear in a 1918 US trade union address by a Nicholas Klein:
“And, my friends, in this story you have a history of this entire movement. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that, is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America”. 12
I have a sneaking suspicion that what happens is someone comes across a quote like Klein’s and thinks “Hmmm. What he should have said is this…” — then they make up an ‘improved’ version and attribute it to Einstein, Gandhi, Rumi, or some other figure they deem more noteworthy (and therefore quote worthy) than the original source.
Two Genuine Quotes
The following two genuine quotes add colour to the sentiments above.
Firstly, this from the first management consultant with access to a printing press:
“And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.” - Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince 13
Why I find it inspirational
Far too many “change programs” fail to take adequate account of the deeply embedded immunity to change succinctly captured in Machiavelli’s description above.
It also matches the contemporary findings of Professor Damon Centola that behavioural change is a complex contagion requiring wide bridges if it’s to stick. 14
The second genuine quote adding colour to the ones above is this from the founding father of quantum theory:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die — and a new generation grows up that is already familiar with it”. - Max Planck 15
Why I find it inspirational
It accurately sums up my main professional frustration over the past 35 years.
When I got involved in the learning organisation movement 30+ years ago, my colleagues and I believed we were on the cusp of a fundamental transformation in mainstream organisational culture.
We were convinced organisations were poised to become vibrant communities of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness — where senior executives would no longer hog decision making but instead create conditions enabling future-fit cultures where people cooperate and collaborate across the whole organisation to co-create continuous new value in the world.
Three decades later, future-fit organisational cultures are still more rhetoric than reality.
But what is different today is that many people in organisations have grown up familiar with the idea that sense making, decision making & action taking have to become ever more tightly coupled, rapidly and repeatedly iterated, deeply embedded and widely distributed throughout an organisation for it to thrive in our increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world.
To turn that aspiration into actuality, they also need:
the confidence to challenge legacy habitual attitudes and behaviours anchoring their organisations to the past; and
the understanding of where to find, and the skills to achieve, maximum leverage for transformation.
That’s why I set up this Substack channel — to share ideas, insights, tools and methods I’ve found most effective across the dozens of organisations I’ve worked with throughout Europe, Asia and the US over the past 35 years, supporting their efforts to create future-fit cultures of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.
There are also important pitfalls, barriers, and obstacles that organisational interventions need to avoid, address, and overcome.
Of particular importance are the Five Fatal Habits that have consistently prevented organisations from becoming future-fit over the past 30 years.
Find out more about these habits — and how you can overcome them — in my free 22-page guide, downloadable here (signup NOT required).
In a telegram to prominent Americans sent on 24 May 1946, Einstein did say: “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels”. Alice Calaprice, who researched Einstein extensively for her 2005 book The New Quotable Einstein believes this may be the source of the popular misattribution.
This six minute video describes the shift from the 2D level of thinking to the 2D3D level of thinking that underpins a future-fit culture of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness.
The ‘Talmud’ reference probably originated with Anaïs Nin in the following from her 1961 work Seduction of the Minotaur: “Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words: ‘We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are’.” In this context, ‘talmudic’ may simply mean ‘ancient’.
This seven minute video describes Seeing-Being Traps.
There is no reliable documentary evidence for the quotation, although M.K.’s grandson Arun Gandhi attributes the quote to his famous grandfather. It’s always possible Arun did hear M.K. say it, but as he was only 14 when M.K. died, few regard this a reliable source.
This seven minute video describes how and why the pragmatic, low-risk, high-leverage way to cultivate a systemic, organisation-wide shift to innovative mindsets is to focus precisely and deeply, first and foremost on cultivating this mindset shift in key influencers.
Published in their 1996 book Intentional Revolutions.
What Schopenhauer did say, in the preface to the first edition of The World as Will and Representation, is “All knowledge, and especially the weightiest knowledge of the truth, to which only a brief triumph is allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial”.
Robbie Williams’ song “Tripping” (2005) included this slightly different version of the quote: “First they ignore you, then laugh at you and hate you. Then they fight you, then you win.”
Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (1918), p. 53 via Google Books
A version of The Prince was circulating in 1513 although the printed version was not published until in 1532, five years after Machiavelli’s death. The quote above is from Chapter VI. “Concerning new principalities which are acquired by one’s own arms and ability”.
From Planck’s Scientific Autobiography (1949). Sometimes paraphrased as “science progresses one funeral at a time”.