Jo Johnson Quotes

We don't want to put a band-aid on our problems that we keep talking about in society; we want to get down to the nitty gritty and do some surgery.

One cannot legislate problems out of existence. It has been tried.

The evils which are complained of can not be eradicated at once; the work must be gradual.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

No given measure and no given set of measures will work a perfect cure for any serious evil.

You can’t fix the things that bother you the most by passing a law.

There is no short and easy road, no magic cure for those ills which have afflicted mankind from the dawn of history.

We live in a culture that's been hijacked by the management consultant ethos. We want everything boiled down to a Power Point slide. We want metrics and 'show me the numbers.' That runs counter to the immensely complex nature of so many social, economic and political problems. You cannot devise an algorithm to fix them.

I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers.

If you don’t understand how problems came to be, how are you going to know how to fix them?

There is no silver bullet. I know people in Washington want grand solutions for everything.

If you're around the system any length of time, it becomes obvious you have to attack the problem at its root and get to 7- and 8-year old kids.

I am not running for president in order to put Band-Aids on our problems.

Technology can relieve the symptoms of the problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem

It is true that [the] present-day young are idealistic. But theirs is the easy idealism that condemns abuses and pushes aside any thought that would reveal the difficulties and complexities inherent in righting wrongs. They are not willing to do the hard work by which alone the world can be improved. Hearing what they say, and seeing what they do, one suspects that one of the main functions of the young’s idealism is finding good reasons for doing bad things.

So complex are all the ingredients that cause gang membership that it seems virtually impossible to isolate one solution that can address them all and thereby manufacture a hope for the future upon which these kids can rely.

In my reporting, I've found that real change escapes many change-makers because powerful illusions guide their projects.

Creating problems is easy. We do it all the time. Finding solutions, ones that last and produce good results, requires guts and care.

It's not enough to tackle just the symptoms of poverty. You have to tackle the causes of poverty.

We can't fix the real problems if we only cauterize and don't treat the roots of evil.

We all need a government that solves our real problems and is not preoccupied with itself.

That is the problem we have in Argentina: we do not sit down and think.

When you keep un-bundling various aspects of a social problem, you can arrive at a very basic, common space.

In terms of addressing crime issues in the black community, the dominant political class has historically refused to endorse the full slate of reforms along lines of education, economic security, housing, etc, necessary to address the root causes.

Producing more reams of detailed policies that have marginal and limited effects on our society is futile.