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.

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

Real progress in understanding nature is rarely incremental. All important advances are sudden intuitions, new principles, new ways of seeing.

The brain's calculations do not require our conscious effort, only our attention and our openness to let the information through. Although the brain absorbs universes of information, little is admitted into normal consciousness.

The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is freedom.

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.

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.

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.

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

Victory doesn't lie in taming our nature but in progressively discovering and revealing more of it.

People are seeking more power in the individual and less in government and institutions; they want more cooperation and less competition.

The New Age, I think, is a term that is well laid to rest.

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

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.'

We get 150 notices a week for seminars.

Although focusing is best pursued as a deliberate strategy over a period of time, it is also valuable as a kind of psychological first-aid, as useful to a distressed, 'stuck' person as a tourniquet to an accident victim.

The chaos in our world may have brought you close to despair, but if you are willing to look at reasons for hope, perhaps you are ready for the 'Aquarian Conspiracy.'

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.

Most of us are having to invent, discover, and create the next steps of our lives without a light, a map, or a relevant tradition.

We have new ways to be born, humane and symbolic ways to die, different ways to be rich... new ways to be human and to discover what we are to each other.

If the thing that you want to happen is happening... it's no longer a movement.

The best artists are scientific, and the best scientists are artistic.

I feed on conferences.

'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.