Entrenched Power Quotes

Liberal institutions soon cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established.

If a legislator is safe from competition, or if he represents groups with the same economic and political beliefs, he does not have to change his ideas or respond to the needs of the broader population. He can rest content with a mediocre, absentee performance knowing he will be returned to office. And as he is returned year after year the seniority system gives him immense control over people from other parts of the country whose views he need not heed at all.

Can a Congress worker ever think of becoming a Prime Minister? No. Because that seat is reserved by birth in that party.

There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to entrenched power, as the old court jesters.

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

Even talking about change can be threatening to entrenched interests...Careers in the Pentagon, the board room, or the halls of Congress are not advanced by creating the disruptions that go with real change, so there are very few voices willing to speak up for the future and move beyond rhetoric to make serious choices.

The truth is, I feel sorry for the Old Etonians. Everybody should be judged on his or her own merits. Assuming that toffs are 'out of touch' is more modern and fashionable than assuming they have a 'natural fitness for government,' but it's no fairer.

The evils of European society were rooted in feudalism and entrenched in privilege.

Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law; no change. Despotism! They know one rule; force. Maldistribution! They know one desire; to hold what is theirs.

I believe the old boys' network is a powerful one. No one gives up power and privilege willingly, do they?

It's very difficult, historically, to define what an elite is. But whatever it is, people are very angry at that idea, I think, not so much because of wealth or privilege as much as attitude that the populous masses, if I could use that overused term, feel that a particular government or cultural group is not subject to the ramifications of their own ideology.

Though not really a comedy, 'Rosewater' is a demonstration of the creed behind 'The Daily Show': belief in the crucial need for impious wit against entrenched power. The freedom of the press is also the freedom to depress - and to inspire. That's a message that can outlive any Oscar season.

It is a common happening that those in power, as their tenure of office continues, find themselves less and less able to contemplate relinquishing it.

I really think what's happening to the American political system is that it has been reduced to a system of self-perpetuation for the people in it. And they view security for themselves as always needing things to be done.

It is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether practically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart.

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

I really believe that more harm is done by old men who cling to their influence than by young men who anticipate it.

Some of those men in power, we just have to change their faces because we're not going to change their minds.

I am talking and really talking on this very entrenched power structure, and what we're doing is we're talking about the power structure, we're talking about its entrenchment. As a result, the media is going through what they have to go through to.

Washington has become this place that people don't leave. It has become this permanent feudal class.

An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established--the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to anything that has not the recommendation of antiquity.

The main obstacle is the entrenched power of the legacy polluters.

What happens when you get any kind of entrenched power is that it just becomes kind of corrupt and self-serving.

The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed.

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.