60 Quotes by Fritjof Capra

Whenever the essential nature of things is analysed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the mystics, but has become a problem in science only very recently.

Genuine mental health would involve a balanced interplay of both modes of experience, a way of life in which one’s identification with the ego is playful and tentative rather than absolute and mandatory, while the concern with material possessions is pragmatic rather than obsessive.

The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.

Science does not need mysticism and mysticism does not need science but man needs both.

Our Western science, ever since the 17th century, has been obsessed with the notion of control, of man dominating nature. This obsession has led to disaster.

Zen phrase says The instant you speak about a thing you miss the mark.

With the subsequent strong support from cybernetics, the concepts of systems thinking and systems theory became integral parts of the established scientific language, and led to numerous new methodologies and applications – systems engineering, systems analysis, systems dynamics, and so on.

As long as we do science, some things will always remain unexplained.

One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.