Robert Fritz Quotes

Because humanity is part of nature, it should be no surprise that people act consistently with natural law. But for most of us, this is a new idea. In our culture we have been taught to ignore our relationship to nature, to treat nature simply as the stage or background that we use, adopt, tolerate, or oppose, as the case may be.

Some teachers think they are preparing their students for life by teaching them that the choices they have are limited. Thus the real lesson they teach is compromise: Learn to live with what you don't really like because you will have plenty of that.

To the reactive-responsive person it is not acceptable to spend your life on what you love, because what you love is not tied to the circumstances.

Originality means nothing. It is the power of the artistic vision that counts. As time passes, most things original will not be original. Fashions, styles, forms, flairs, and what’s in vogue, all will pass. The fashion will become out of date, the style will change, the flair will fizzle, and we will wonder why anyone was shocked. What will always matter is the substance of the artwork, not its style.

The FIRST Law of Organizational Structure Organizations either oscillate or advance. This distinction is truly as black and white as it sounds. An organization is predominately one that advances or one that oscillates. When any type of action (TQM, organizational learning, reengineering, lean, you name it), occurs in an organization structured to advance, it has an entirely different impact than it would in an organization structured to oscillate. In the first, actions actually work; in the second, they don’t. In both types of organizations there are instances of success. In fact, every organization is filled with plenty of successes. But the consequences of success in an advancing organization are radically different from an oscillating organization. In structural advancement, success ultimately leads to long-term success; you can build on it, you can grow other successes, you can create momentum, energy and drive; in organizations in which structural oscillation is in play, success is neutralized.

"What motivates a creator? The desire for the creation to exist. A creator creates in order to bring the creation into being. People in the reactive-responsive orientation often have trouble understanding this sensibility: to create for the sake of the creation itself. Not for the praise, not for the "return on investment," not for what it may say about you, *but for its own sake.*
Poet Robert Frost captured the spirit of the orientation of the creative when he said:
"All the great things are done for their own sake."
...
When you separate yourself from your creations, you can experience one of the most profound understandings of creativity - love. *The reason you would create anything is because you love it enough to see it exist.*"

Even Mozart, perhaps the most gifted composer in history, developed and grew in his art. The music he wrote in his thirties was far more advanced than what he wrote in his twenties or in his teens. The more music he wrote, the more he was able to write.