Marilyn Ferguson Quotes

Marilyn Ferguson

Profession : American Author

Birth : April 5, 1938

Death : October 19, 2008

We rarely think to mark the trail for others to follow. 'Live and learn,' we say, acknowledging the value of experience. We usually forget about 'Live and teach.'

Marilyn Ferguson

The paradigm of the 'Aquarian Conspiracy' sees humankind embedded in nature. It promotes the autonomous individual in a decentralized society... The new perspective respects the ecology of everything: birth, death, learning, health, family, work, science, spirituality, the arts, the community, relationships, politics.

Marilyn Ferguson

Awakenings occur when we lose faith in the viability of our institutions and the authority of our leaders. Religious and spiritual awakening gives people a new vision of themselves, which is then transplanted into social action.

Marilyn Ferguson

Radical common sense is the wisdom gleaned from the past that recognizes the perishable opportunities of the moment. It is the willingness to admit error and the refusal to be deterred by failure.

Marilyn Ferguson

'Focusing' is no conventional repackaging of self-help wisdom. It is at once a manual and a philosophy. It talks about the body's wisdom, the steps of the focusing technique, how to discover the richness in others by learning to listen.

Marilyn Ferguson

Achievers have an enabling attitude, realism, and a conviction that they themselves were the laboratory of innovation. Their ability to change themselves is central to their success. They have learned to conserve their energy by minimizing the time spent in regret or complaint. Every event is a lesson to them, every person a teacher.

Marilyn Ferguson

A self-defined challenge is an irresistible teacher.

Marilyn Ferguson

Leadership desperately needs women.

Marilyn Ferguson

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.

Marilyn Ferguson

The ferment and viability in any society is directly proportionate to the number of people actively living their ideas. This is not positive thinking - it is positive action: the spirit of experiment.

Marilyn Ferguson

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.

Marilyn Ferguson

'Aquarian Conspiracy' is the term I have coined for the network of people working for social transformation based on personal inner change. Such a notion is not at all alien to the American milieu.

Marilyn Ferguson

Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.

Marilyn Ferguson

Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

Marilyn Ferguson

Problems can be experienced as... a chance for renewal rather than stress.

Marilyn Ferguson

I believe that social change has almost reached critical mass. So many people have undergone personal transformation that their effect on society is having a geometric - not arithmetic - impact. This coalescence of energies brings about meeting, networking, and a sophistication in communications that is unprecedented in history.

Marilyn Ferguson

People who have discovered a purpose feel better, like themselves more, age more subtly, and live longer.

Marilyn Ferguson

You can be more productive, confident, comfortable with insecurity.

Marilyn Ferguson

After a dark, violent age, the Piscean, we are entering a millennium of love and light in the words of the popular song the 'Age of Aquarius,' the time of the mind's true liberation.

Marilyn Ferguson

Despair is a cop-out, the ultimate abdication of all responsibility, in which people feel justified in their feelings of impotence. But if, on the other hand, you feel that your work in the world does make a difference and that you do have the power to change things, the nay-sayers will turn a deaf ear.

Marilyn Ferguson