Robert McNamara Quotes

I think we've seen at least the beginnings of rather significant social and economic change in the Muslim world, which I think will in due course lead to more political change.

You have to believe that it's through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.

There's a lot of books out there about how you lead change in business, but I've certainly not seen any... on how you do that in public institutions.

The problem is this. The spread of markets outpaces the ability of societies and their political systems to adjust to them, let alone to guide the course they take

Significant and seemingly impossible social and political change happens more often than we think, and it happens more rapidly than we realize. Even the most momentous change is always possible if one finds the right way to make it happen.

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system. -- With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature [us] will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

The duty of an American churchman in China is not simply introducing new ideas into the country, but modifying its industrial, social, and political life and institutions. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies.

There’s a carrying capacity in any society for how much change it can incorporate at any one time.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

The next great technology revolution might be around the corner, but it won't automatically improve most people's lives. That will depend on politics, which is indeed ugly but also inescapable.

As an organizer, I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be - it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system.

Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the social democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

Nelson Mandela understood that social transformation and economic transformation go hand in hand.

Simply as an exercise in efficient politics, Obama '08 rewrote the textbook. His accomplishment was historic and one that transformed how race and politics intersect in our society. Obama is the leading edge of this change, but his success is merely the ripple in a pond that grows deeper every day.

With scale, there always becomes this tension of, how do you keep the start-up philosophy?

I want society to feel they are part of a process of change.

We are legislators, not public works contractors. People look up to us to make serious laws that could change the lives of a great number of people or could change the way society is run or managed.

Society is changing constantly, and changing faster than we think.

Technology can be part of a solution, but it takes far more than software to usher in reform.

We need a new political movement of women and men toward a new society.

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.

We also have to engage - and I think this is important - in national politics because there is no way to address questions of this scale in the short time that we have to address them without engaging in real political change.

To get the bad customs of a country changed and new ones, though better, introduced, it is necessary first to remove the prejudices of the people, enlighten their ignorance, and convince them that their interests will be promoted by the proposed changes; and this is not the work of a day.

It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.