“At present there is far more to be gained by pushing the boundaries of what can be done by the bottom than by focusing on what can be done at the top.”

As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. p. 444

The Great Wide World Over There (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX

Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding.; this provides the origin of the phrase "a square peg in a round hole".
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)
Context: It is a very wise rule in the conduct of the understanding, to acquire early a correct notion of your own peculiar constitution of mind, and to become well acquainted, as a physician would say, with your idiosyncrasy. Are you an acute man, and see sharply for small distances? or are you a comprehensive man, and able to take in, wide and extensive views into your mind? Does your mind turn its ideas into wit? or are you apt to take a common-sense view of the objects presented to you? Have you an exuberant imagination, or a correct judgment? Are you quick, or slow? accurate, or hasty? a great reader, or a great thinker? It is a prodigious point gained if any man can find out where his powers lie, and what are his deficiencies, — if he can contrive to ascertain what Nature intended him for: and such are the changes and chances of the world, and so difficult is it to ascertain our own understandings, or those of others, that most things are done by persons who could have done something else better. If you choose to represent the various parts in life by holes upon a table, of different shapes, — some circular, some triangular, some square, some oblong, — and the persons acting these parts by bits of wood of similar shapes, we shall generally find that the triangular person has got into the square hole, the oblong into the triangular, and a square person has squeezed himself into the round hole. The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly, that we can say they were almost made for each other.

nbcnews.com http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/edward-snowden-interview/naive-gravely-mistaken-analysts-rebut-snowden-claims-n117101
2014

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, December 16). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152913871520610/
2014, Facebook
Variant: There should be a top to bottom revamp of the Bureau of Corrections. Replacing the head is not enough. That has been done several times before and did not work.

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 211

Wallerstein (1974) The modern world system capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.