institutional evolution Quotes

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That's paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic.

Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers

If the country is to survive as a democracy it will depend on voters who understand how our political institutions have evolved and the events that went into their creation. A nation's sense of its history is indistinguishable from its social cohesion.

The United Nations represents not a final stage in the development of world order, but only a primitive stage. Therefore its primary task is to create the conditions which will make possible a more highly developed organization.

Free markets and democracy are far from an overnight solution to poverty- they require among many other things the bottom-up evolution of the rules of the game, including contract enforcement and fair political competition.

No important institution is ever merely what the law makes it. It accumulates about itself traditions, conventions, ways of behavior, which ... are not less formidable in their influence.

You may have noticed over the years that the UN became a bit more media-friendly, a bit more open to the media than in the past.

European government is a clear expression I still use, you need time, but step by step, as in the Austrian case, the European Commission takes a political decision and behaves like a growing government.

In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.

I'm not sure that it's right to view this as excluding a particular group. When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn't get around and say, 'Let's have this institution, but let's keep out homosexuals.' The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn't include homosexual couples.

The most universal challenge that we face is the transition from seeing our human institutions as machines to seeing them as embodiments of nature.

I do not know what will happen in China politically. I do know that it is impossible to maintain the communist system or probably even a strict one-party system when the economy becomes so pluralistic. Now, what form that takes and what institutions will evolve, I do not have a clear view about. I do not think the United States, as a general principle, ought to intervene in this.

...it would be a mistake...to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew.

It will always be found that one flourishing institution exists and battens on another mouldering one. The Present itself is parasitic to this extent.

To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them.

I would love to see the Church on the right side of history.

You want us to step in and render a decision based on an assessment of the effects of this institution which is newer than cellphones or the Internet?

Our history tells us that public institutions evolve through a process of bargaining between the state and groups in society.

Americans also seem to believe that the monarchy is a kind of mediaeval hangover, encumbered by premodern notions of decorum; the reality is that the British monarchy, for good or ill, is a modern political institution - perhaps the first modern political institution.

I want to note that, historically, the make-up of the court has changed just as elected branches have change.

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth.

Until higher institutions have been evolved, any attempt to break the old ones will be disastrous.

The place has had a super-conflicted relationship to its mission. In 1956, it opened as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Then in 1986 it had a midlife crisis and changed its name to the American Craft Museum. Then in 2002 the name changed again, this time to the Museum of Arts and Design. Maybe in 2025 the place will be called the Designatorium. The big problem with a museum of craft and design is that all art has craft and design.

An idea or institution may arise for one reason and be maintained for quite a different reason.