Courage is simply doing whatever is needed in pursuit of the vision

New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works...images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models - surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works - promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.

Mastery of creative tension brings out the capacity for perseverance and patience. Time is an ally.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence .

The discipline of personal mastery...starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us (and) living our lives in the service of our highest aspirations.

Business has a way of talking about how to create value, which is in some way isn't bad... We just need to start thinking about if the value we want to create is consistent with all social and environmental well being.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.