System Failure Quotes

We have institutions, but they don’t work. We have laws, but they must be enforced.

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.

We have the best government that money can buy.

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

The victims of crime have been transformed into a group oppressively burdened by a system designed to protect them.

The old system collapsed before a new one could be created.

Everywhere I go - from Main Street to Wall Street - people ask, 'What's happened to our political system? Why can't Washington folks work together?'

The best instituted governments carry in them the seeds of their own destruction; and though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour that they live is an hour less that they have to live.

Communism can't survive the captivating allure of capitalism.

Several highly improbable and therefore unforeseen failures.

The fundamental problem with the immigration system in our country is that it serves the needs of wealthy donors, political activists and powerful, powerful politicians. It's all you can do.

Democracy and capitalism have both been hacked.

Failures happen in any system.

It is simply the truth that the political system that I am part of has degenerated to the point that it needs fundamental change.

The wonder of this month's military procurement scandal is that it can still scandalize us. The practices that are being exposed—the revolving door between government and industry, the mutual backscratching between the military and the companies that build the weapons—aren't abuses of the system. They are the system.

Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

Treat the world like a failed state; then you can understand the players needed to fix it.

The failure of the system to deal quickly was attributable to Nixon's lying, stonewalling and refusal to come clean. So it took 26 months for the final truth to be known.

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?

I had enabled the development of a corrupt system right under my very eyes..

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

The ultimate credo of capitalism is to exploit people. It's not like this is just an incidental problem; it's inherent in the system.

A system that warehouses people is not the cure for social ills

Only a cheap politician, greedy for political gain, would try to single out one individual for blame. The fault lies not with the individual but with the system, and that system is Richard Nixon.

Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.