Harrison Owen - Restore Commons

Harrison Owen is a pioneer in Open Space Technology: an idea centered around self-organizing of people that leads to peace in the community. He also is the founder of H.H. Owen and Co. and the author of several books that explore the ideas of self-organizing systems, Open Space Technology, and how to utilize these practices.

Harrison Owen’s Content

Principles and Laws
Harrison Owen shares the five principles and one law of the Open ...
Faith and Open Space
Harrison Owen discusses parallels between God and the concept of Open Space.
Self-Organizing Systems
Harrison Owen names the New York City food system as an example ...
Open Space is not Management
Harrison Owen discusses Open Space and the concept of self-leadership.
Discovering Open Space
Harrison Owen discusses the idea of Open Space and naturalistic sharing and ...

Education is never neutral. It always involves a project…either keep things the same or change them.

Paolo Friere

Revolution is not capturing institutions, it is discovering free space and enlarging it.

Paul Goodman

All consciousness begins with an act of disobedience.

Carl Jung

The power to call people a problem is the most injurious thing you can do.

John McKnight

Though the commons is everywhere, it is nonetheless little noticed. For economists, it is a kind of inchoate mass that awaits the vivifying hand of the market to attain life. Forests are worthless until they become timber, just as quiet is worthless until it becomes advertising.

Jonathan Rowe, Our Common Wealth

Leadership is willingness to have faith in a future we do not understand.

Clint Kemp

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

Henry Miller

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Soren Kierkegaard

A part of kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.

Italian Proverb

I have tried to teach service to my husband and revolution to my son.

unknown

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Joseph Joubert

Our communities are broken. For the ones that look whole, the price is being born somewhere else.

Jim Keene

If your time hasn’t come, not even a doctor can kill you.

Meyer A Perlstein

Lost luggage is an initiation ritual. It is an invitation to a simpler life.

Madeline Nold

Most communities can be compared to a football game where 30,000 people who need the exercise turn up to watch 36 people who don’t.

Peter Kenyon

Questions are fateful. They determine destinations. They are the chamber through which destiny calls.

Godwin Hlatshwayo

I fear one day I’ll meet God, he’ll sneeze, and I won’t know what to say.

Ronnie Shakes

If I am ever stuck on a respirator or life support system, I definitely want to be unplugged-but not until I get down to a size eight.

Henriette Mantel

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.

Adrienne Rich

Every time you add a highway lane, you slow down traffic.

Bross’s paradox

When we meet, I am talking to myself and you are spying on me.

Leroy