I read this here from Bob Sutton:
A couple years ago I was talking the Institute’s (Palo Alto Institue of the Future) Bob Johansen about wisdom, and he explained that – to deal with an uncertain future and still move forward – he advises people to have “strong opinions, which are weakly held.”
Charteuse continues on this describing:
The UN doesn’t work. Our Government doesn’t work. Our schools don’t work. Our health system doesn’t work. Our families don’t work.
Google and Terrorism works. GM and High Schools don’t. But again,what scares me isn’t Al Qaeda. It’s institutions and people trying to preserve the old way of doing things.
They say the difference between being smart and wise is to have “Strong Opinions, Weakly Held”. It’s the difference between the Clinton and Bush administrations. It’s also the core to successful 21st Century thinking.
Interesting to think about. What are your strong beliefs and would you be willing to change the way you go about getting them executed or implemented?
it is true that Bill Clinton’s strongest held belief was Bill Clinton. He would abandon any strongly held belief as long as that was what was necessary for him to hold on to power. That didn’t make him successful or benefit the country.
If you want to compare the political outcomes it’s a wash. Both Clinton and Bush took office with his party in power on Capitol Hill and both left with the other party in the majority.
This phrase “Successful 21st Century Thinking” is a little laughable. What Obama and other “progressives” are pushing is more of a post-WWII European ideal, a way of governance that is teetering on the precipice of disaster due to falling European birthrates and high rates of non-assimilating Islamic immigration.
Canada is experiencing similar upheavals in their Trudeaupian ideals. Journalists are being hauled before extra-judicial tribunals and free speech is endangered.
Their national health service rationing is getting worse. The Fraser Institute reports that wait times between GP referral and seeing a specialist is up to nine weeks in many provinces.
These so-called “21st Century Progressive” ideas aren’t new. Just because we Americans haven’t tried them doesn’t make it better. Abandoning the tried and true for “change for the sake of change” isn’t policy, it’s just madness.
@ejhill1925 Thanks for the comment. This post was written now 8 years ago and i think some of this thinking has changed. – See more at: http://loo.me/2006/07/quote-strong-opinions-weakly-held/#sthash.ZGjrI6WW.dpuf