# Quote — Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems

> That very large system, with interconnected industries responding to each other through delays, entraining each other in their oscillations, and being amplified by multipliers and speculators, is the primary cause of business cycles. Those cycles don't come from presidents, although presidents can do much to ease or intensify the optimism of the upturns and the pain of the downturns. Economies are extremely complex systems; they are full of balancing feedback loops with delays and they are inherently oscillatory.

- Author: [Donella H. Meadows](https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows.md)
- Book: [Thinking in Systems](https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows/thinking-in-systems.md)
- Page: 58
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows#Thinking_in_Systems:_A_Primer_(2008)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows/thinking-in-systems/that-very-large

## More from this book

> How is it that one way of seeing the world becomes so widely shared that institutions, technologies, production systems, buildings, cities, become shaped around that way of seeing?

p. 169 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows/thinking-in-systems/how-is-it-that.md)

> There always will be limits to growth.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows/thinking-in-systems/there-always-will-be.md)

> The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/donella-h-meadows/thinking-in-systems/the-bounded-rationality.md)