Institutional Barriers Quotes

Changing things is not easy, and I say this without any irony. It is not that someone does not want to, but because it is a hard thing to do. Take Obama, a forward-thinking man, a liberal, a democrat. Did he not pledge to shut down Guantanamo before his election? But did he do it? No, he did not. And may I ask why not? Did he not want to do it? He wanted to, I am sure he did, but it did not work out. He sincerely wanted to do it, but did not succeed, since it turned out to be very complicated.

Can we in good conscience expect youth to work within the system when we deny them that very opportunity?

All the traditional models for doing things are collapsing; from music to publishing to film, and it's a wide open door for people who are creative to do what they need to do without having institutions block their art.

Entrepreneurs almost always have to step out of existing institutions that embody old ways of doing things to build their vision.

As the U.S. prison population has surged over the decades, the legal profession's distaste for former inmates has become more conspicuous. And it isn't only law. Medical schools often have committees to evaluate cases and mitigating factors but are generally reluctant to admit ex-inmates.

Poor people always pay back their loans. [...] It is us, the designers of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them.

There is nothing like proposals for intelligence reform to activate the anti-bodies of the affected agencies.

If we could create higher education from scratch, would we have organizations that divide people by race, class and gender at institutions that are supposed to be encouraging diversity? No!

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.

We cannot put into the Constitution, owing to existing prejudices and existing institutions, an entire exclusion of all class distinctions.

Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.

In every developing country, even developed ones, vested interests prevent sectors from being reformed.

Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.

People who face discrimination due to the color of their skin, are often obstructed by institutional barriers across our society - from education and housing, to employment and healthcare, to voting rights and the criminal justice system.

You don't see black people winning Nobel prizes for physics or economics or any of the industries or institutions that shape the way the world operates.

Nobody can be at the same time a correct bureaucrat and an innovator

If voting could change anything, they would have made it illegal.

There could be an independent labor-based party, which might over time become an important force the way the Labor Party did in England. To all of these things there are plenty of barriers, in the culture and in the social and political institutions, the concentration of economic power. But these are not insuperable barriers, I think. They can be overcome. And it is urgent that this be done, because there are really incredible problems that are simply not being addressed.

Growing up, I was told I could be anything I wanted to be. There were no limitations restraining me just because I was a girl. Then I joined the military.

I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

We should therefore be opposed to institutional barriers to that freedom: Military dictatorships, for example. Or states run by a Central Committee.

I had known, number one, that there would never be any role for me in the leadership capacity with SCLC. Why? First, I'm a woman. Also, I'm not a minister. And second, I am a person that feels that I have to maintain some degree of personal integrity and be my own barometer of what is important and what is not.

Congress wasn't built for members like me. For those of us who have young children, which is a minority, there's definitely the built-in assumption of a two-parent model... There is no template for how to do this in my situation as a single mom.

Both the Army and the Navy are closed to our sex. Nor, again, are we allowed to be members of the Stock Exchange. Thus we cannot use either the pressure of force or the pressure of money. We cannot preach sermons or negotiate treaties. Then again, although it is true that we can write articles or send letters to the press, the control of the press … is entirely in the hands of your sex …