Institutional stagnation Quotes

How oppressive the best institutions become in the course of a few generations …. shall a system of government or religion … endure for ever?

A changeless constitution becomes the protector not only of vested rights but of vested wrongs.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

People in power make the path to power. It means that we will always get the same system, and it's one that is not necessarily in the interest of people's lives.

Left to its own devices, the State Department machinery tends toward inertia rather than creativity; it is always on the verge of turning itself into an enormous cable machine.

Too much power in any institution tends to stifle innovation.

We must reject all notions of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards', more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy.

Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.

There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

The world has changed but our school systems haven't.

The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

Major flaw in government arise from a fear of making radical internal changes even though a need is clearly seen.

It's the idea that we just have to go along, we can't change it, things won't change. I think that's the sad part, the sad reality traditional parties have bred in parts of Atlantic Canada.

Technology has changed almost everything. One institution remains stubbornly anchored in the past. It's where I work - the United States Congress, a 19th Century institution using 20th Century technology to respond to 21st Century problems.

It would be a mistake to assume that the present day educational system is unchanging. On the contrary, it is undergoing rapid change. But much of this change is no more than an attempt to refine the existent machinery, making it ever more efficient in pursuit of obsolete goals.

The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo.

If institutions don't grow, they... well, I don't know what happens to them, because they always grow. I suppose the point is that we forget about the ones that don't.