Quotes about institution
page 13

“It is my considered opinion that the State of Israel is a racist state in the full meaning of this term: In this state people are discriminated against, in the most permanent and legal way and in the most important areas of life, only because of their origin. This racist discrimination began in Zionism and is carried out today mainly in co-operation with the institutions of the Zionist movement.”

Israel Shahak (1933–2001) Israeli academic

"The Racist Nature of Zionism and of the Zionist State of Israel" in the student newspaper of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Pi-Ha'aton (5 November 1975).

Life , People , Way
Francis Escudero photo

“First, on my list would be Good Governance. We must repair our house. Many of our institutions have been severely weakened. The trust and faith in the fairness of such critical institutions as the Comelec, the Dept. of Justice, the AFP-ISAPH, the PNP, the Sandigan aside from the chronically corrupt Bureau of Customs and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Faith , Justice , Housing
Brigham Young photo

“Go to the United States, into Europe, or wherever you can come across men who have been in the midst of this people, and one will tell you that we are a poor, ignorant, deluded people; the next will tell you that we are the most industrious and intelligent people on the earth, and are destined to rise to eminence as a nation, and spread, and continue to spread, until we revolutionize the whole earth. If you pass on to the third man, and inquire what he thinks of the "Mormons," he will say they are fools, duped and led astray by Joe Smith, who was a knave, a false Prophet, and a money digger. Why is all this? It is because there is a spirit in man. And when the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached on the earth, and the kingdom of God is established, there is also a spirit in these things, and an Almighty spirit too. When these two spirits come in contact one with the other, the spirit of the Gospel reflects light upon the spirit which God has placed in man, and wakes him up to a consciousness of his true state, which makes him afraid he will be condemned, for he perceives at once that "Mormonism" is true. "Our craft is in danger," is the first thought that strikes the wicked and dishonest of mankind, when the light of truth shines upon them. Say they, "If these people called Latter-day Saints are correct in their views, the whole world must be wrong, and what will become of our time-honoured institutions, and of our influence, which we have swayed successfully over the minds of the people for ages. This Mormonism must be put down."”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 1:187-188 (June 19, 1853)
1850s

Men , Money , God , People

“The common impression regards this scale or chain merely as a "type" of organization, characteristic only of the vaster institutions of government, army, church and industry. This impression is erroneous. It is likewise misleading, for it seems to imply that the scalar chain in organization lacks universality. These great organizations differ from others only in that the chain is longer. The truth is that wherever we find an organization even of two people, related as superior and subordinate, we have the scalar principled.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 14-15

People , Truth , Universe
Nicholas Wade photo

“There are two important factors to consider in the emergence of social change. One is that a society develops through changes in its institutions, which are blends of culture and genetically shaped social behavior. The other is that the genes and culture interact. This may seem paradoxical to anyone who considers genes and culture to be entirely separate realms. But it is scarcely surprising from an evolutionary perspective, given that the genome is designed to respond to the environment, and a major component of the human environment is society and its cultural practices.”

Nicholas Wade (1942) British writer

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History (2014)

Behavior , Change
William C. Davis photo

“Race had never been a defining element in successful nation states. The true definition always depended far more on distinctions in language, culture, and political institutions. Southerners spoke precisely the same language as Northerners, so there was no distinction there.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 20

Success , Dependency
William Westmoreland photo

“Those of us in the military may have even underestimated the degree of support the American people still afforded the military, for a recent public opinion survey revealed that the military services are among the public institutions that the people trust most. For one looking back on thirty-six years of service in the United States Army, that is a rewarding thought. So, too, I am struck, upon reflection, by the unprecedented changes that occurred during those thirty-six years. From the World War I Stokes mortar and the Model 1897 French 75 artillery piece to sophisticated guided missiles; from the model 1902 rifle to the M-16; from carrier pigeons and Morse code telegraphy to walkie-talkies, computers, and sensors; from a private's pay of $21 a month and a second lieutenant's of $125 to today's private's pay of $344 a month and today's second lieutenant's of $634; through three wars and a number of police actions; from volunteer army back to volunteer army; and from isolationism to multiple international commitments. As one in the middle of the changes at various levels of command responsibility, I have always been impressed by the loyalty, flexibility, durability, and overall effectiveness of the United States Army. The traumatic experience of Vietnam was no exception.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 424.

War , People , World , Support

“The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 1 : We, the People, the New American Slaves, p. 8

People , Change

“The terror of being mistaken for a queer dominates the straight mind because this terror constitutes the straight mind. It is precisely that culturally produced and reinforced horror of/fascination with abjected homosexuality that produces and maintains 'the straight mind' as such, governing not so much specific sexual practices between men and women (after all, these things happen) as the institution (arguably antisexual) of heteronormativity itself.”

Calvin Thomas (critical theorist) (1956) American academic

Source: Straight with a Twist (2000), p. 27.

Women , Men
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Excessive acreages of unused buildings, commercial and residential were created. The need for such construction, given the space demands of modern business bureaucracy, was believed to be without limit. In later consequence, the solvency of numerous banks, including that of some of the nation's largest and most prestigious institutions, was either fatally impaired or placed in doubt. The lending of both those that failed or were endangered and others was subject, by fear and example to curtailment. The construction industry was severely constrained and its workers left unemployed. A general recession ensued. Any early warning as to what was happening would have been exceptionally ill received, seen as yet another invasion of the benign rule of laissez faire and a specific interference with the market. However in keeping with the exceptions to this rule, there would be eventual salvation in a government bailout of the banks. Insurance of bank deposits — a far from slight contribution to contentment — was permissible, as well as assurance that were a bank large enough, it would not be allowed to fail. A preventive role by government was not allowed; eventual government rescue was highly acceptable.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Culture of Contentment

Source: The Culture of Contentment (1992), Ch. 5

Fear , Business

“In April 1946, when I came to Hughes Aircraft to institute high-technology research and development, it was far from the place it was to become. Howard Hughes, I was informed, rarely came around. When he did show up, it was to take up one or another trivial issue. He would toss off detailed directions, for instance, on what to do next about a few old airplanes decaying out in the yard or what kind of seat covers to buy for the company-owned Chevrolets, or he would say he wanted some pictures of clouds taken from an airplane. An accountant from Hughes Tool Co. ((started by Howard's father)) had the title of general manager but was there only to sign checks. A few of Howard's flying buddies were on the payroll, using assorted fanciful titles like some in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, but apparently did next to nothing. A lawyer was on hand to process contracts, but there were practically none. In addition to the Spruce Goose flying freighter, a mammoth eight-engine plywood seaplane that barely managed to fly even once, there was an experimental Navy reconnaissance plane under development (which, with Hughes at the controls, later crashed, almost killing him). The contracts for both planes had been canceled. Perhaps, I said to myself, this is one of those unforeseeable lucky opportunities. Why not use Hughes Aircraft as a base to create a new and needed defense electronics supplier?”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

MEMOIRS OF AN ICBM PIONEER Simon Ramo broke with Howard Hughes, then built TRW, the company that developed the U.S. missile. He says what went right then would go wrong today. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/04/25/70453/index.htm in FORTUNE Magazine, April 25, 1988

Flying
George Mason photo

“Government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration and […] when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Article 3
Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)

People , Communication , Happiness
W. S. Gilbert photo

“Life's a pudding full of plums;
Care's a canker that benumbs,
Wherefore waste our elocution
On impossible solution?
Life's a pleasant institution,
Let us take it as it comes!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The tangled Skein.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life
Roger Garrison photo

“Except for Marxian theories, nearly all modern theories of the business cycle have essential elements that trace back to Knut Wicksell's turn-of-the-century writings on interest and prices. Austrians, New Classicists, Monetarists, and even Keynesians can legitimately claim a kinship on this basis. Accordingly, the recognition, that both the Austrians and the New Classicists have a Swedish ancestry does not translate into a meaningful claim that the two schools are essentially similar. To the contrary, identifying their particular relationships to Wicksellian ideas, like comparing the two formally similar business-cycle theories themselves, reveals more differences than similarities. … [T]o establish the essential difference between the Austrians and the New Classicists, it needs to be added that the focus of the Austrian theory is on the actual market process that translates the monetary cause into the real phenomena and hence on the institutional setting in which this process plays itself out.The New Classicists deliberately abstract from institutional considerations and specifically deny, on the basis of empirical evidence, that the interest rate plays a significant role in cyclical fluctuations (Lucas 1981, p. 237 151–1). Thus, Wicksell's Interest and Prices is at best only half relevant to EBCT. … Taking the Wicksellian metaphor as their cue, the New Classicists are led away from the pre-eminent Austrian concern about the actual market process that transforms cause into effect and towards the belief that a full specification of the economy's structure, which is possible only in the context of an artificial economy, can shed light on an effect whose nature is fundamentally independent of the cause.”

Roger Garrison (1944) American economist

Pages 98–99.
"New Classical and Old Austrian Economics", 1991

School , Idea , Business , Nature
Michael Ignatieff photo

“As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us in life and in politics. Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

Getting Iraq Wrong http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?ei=5070&en=1c14886ef4740931&ex=1187409600&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print&_r=0, The New York Times, August 5, 2007.

Life , World , Way , Reality
Cesar Chavez photo

“These trends are part of the forces of history that cannot be stopped. No person and no organization can resist them for very long. They are inevitable. Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed.
You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.
Our opponents must understand that it's not just a union we have built. Unions, like other institutions, can come and go.
But we're more than an institution. For nearly 20 years, our union has been on the cutting edge of a people's cause — and you cannot do away with an entire people; you cannot stamp out a people's cause.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

People , Feeling , History , Understanding
Seymour Papert photo

“Now, given that picture of a rapid change of society, one would expect to see a rapid evolution of the institutions charged with preparing the young for it. We do not see this. We see a much slower rate of evolution of the school and that means we're seeing a bigger and bigger gap between school and society. This gap is what I believe is responsible for the deterioration of performance in our schools and our educational systems. Because the children can see this; they can see that school is irrelevant. They feel that the pace of school and the mood of the school culture is out of sync with the society in which they live. And so it becomes harder and harder to get them to buy into the idea that school is satisfying their needs, that school is a bridge to the 21st century, as our political leaders keep on reiterating.”

Seymour Papert (1928–2016) MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator

The 11th Colin Cherry Memorial Lecture on Communication http://www.connectedfamily.com/frame4/cf0413seymour/recent_essays/cf0413_cherry_3.html (1998)

Children , Education , School , Feeling
W. Richard Scott photo

“Institutions are social structures that have attained a high degree of resilience. [They] are composed of cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life. Institutions are transmitted by various types of carriers, including symbolic systems, relational systems, routines, and artifacts. Institutions operate at different levels of jurisdiction, from the world system to localized interpersonal relationships. Institutions by definition connote stability but are subject to change processes, both incremental and discontinuous.”

W. Richard Scott (1932) American sociologist

Source: Institutions and Organizations., 1995, p. 33 (2001:48)

Life , World , Change
Arun Shourie photo

“Notice the sleight of hand. The repair of temples is allowed! Temples can be constructed in villages! Temples can be constructed ‘within the privacy of homes’! Thus ‘liberal policy’ is the norm which is departed from only in times of war! And the ones who are fought and destroyed at such times are in any case ‘the enemies of Islam’! In times of peace, which are the times that prevailed normally, the norm prevails – that is, ‘the Hindus practice their religion openly and ostentatiously!’ Each of these assertions is a blatant falsehood. But these historians, having, through their control of institutions, set the standards of intellectual correctness, the one who questions the falsehoods, even though he does so by citing the writings of the best known Islamic historians of those very times, he is the one who is in the wrong.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

War , Peace , Religion , Home

“Few inventions have had so rapid and wide-ranging effects as the various machines which now process data and information by electronic energy. But I hope and believe that even these remarkable engines will not supersede the book as an instrument for the transfer of information. I remain sceptical, particularly when I see the advocates of the paperless society and the electronic library writing large books to support their case. I earnestly hope and believe also that libraries, as the records and memory of humanity, can form a fruitful partnership with the latest tools invented to ease the burden of our labour. Provided that these tools are efficiently operated by well-thought-out systems for organising and retrieving information, they offer the possibilities and opportunities for librarians and information specialists in all types of institution to meet the challenges of the new millennium.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Librarians and Information Systems (1995)

Books , Hope , Support , Memory
Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The state is a bankrupt institution. The only alternative to this bankrupt 'humanistic' system is a God-centered government.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

As quoted in David Cantor and Alan M. Schwartz (1995), Anti-Defamation League book -The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America

God
Alan M. Dershowitz photo

“Here is my proposal. Israel should announce an immediate unilateral cessation in retaliation against terrorist attacks. This moratorium would be in effect for a short period, say four or five days, to give the Palestinian leadership an opportunity to respond to the new policy. It would also make it clear to the world that Israel is taking an important step in ending what has become a cycle of violence. Following the end of the moratorium, Israel would institute the following new policy if Palestinian terrorism were to resume. It will announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

"New response to Palestinian terrorism", The Jerusalem Post, 2002-03-11

World
Jean Paul Sartre photo

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given. He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, he less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Men , Hate , People , Search
Dana Gioia photo

“The engines that have driven poetry's institutional success — the explosion of academic writing programs, the proliferation of subsidized magazines and presses, the emergence of a creative-writing career track, and the migration of American literary culture to the university — have unwittingly contributed to its disappearance from public view.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991)

Universe , Success
Noam Chomsky photo

“I think the basic question you ask is a good one: if we were to withdraw our own beating people over the heads with clubs, would it necessarily follow that somebody else would take that role, or are there other alternatives? Well yeah, there are other alternatives. For example, the alternatives that are favored by the overwhelming majority of the population of the United States. I mentioned one piece of it: let the UN function. The UN isn't perfect, a lot of things wrong with it, just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't perfect… But one step would be to pay some respect to the "decent opinion of mankind", to quote the famous author, and let international institutions function so as to reduce the likelihood that anybody will use force…”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The Idea of Universality in Linguistics and Human Rights" at MIT, March 15, 2005 https://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16001-the-idea-of-universality-in-linguistics-and-human-rights
Quotes 2000s, 2005

People , Quotes , Question , Thinking
John Allen Fraser photo

“For two years now, my office has had the honour and the privilege of sponsoring seminars on the functioning of government in this country for Eastern Europeans. These seminars and exchanges have brought together representatives from such nations as Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic, Roumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine, all of them anxious to learn what makes a society as diverse as Canada work and how our institutions make it governable.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Afterword, p. 173
The House Of Commons At Work (1993)

Learning , Country

“There can be no such thing as a simple "women's issue" in a capitalist system founded on the enslavement of Africans, in which racism remains embedded in its foundation and all its institutions. Nearly every so-called "women's" issue has a racial component.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Women
Roger Scruton photo

“Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the ‘invisible hand’ of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Stand up for the real meaning of freedom," http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/01/the-right-way/ The Spectator (January 2014).

Life , Friendship , People , World
John Galsworthy photo

“How to save the old that's worth saving, whether in landscape, houses, manners, institutions, or human types, is one of our greatest problems, and the one that we bother least about.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Source: Over the River (1933), Ch. 39

Problem , Housing
Errico Malatesta photo

“Anarchists generally make use if the word "State" to mean all the collection of institutions, political, legislative, judicial, military, financial, etc., by means of which management of their own affairs, the guidance of their personal conduct, and the care of ensuring their own safety are taken from the people and confided to certain individuals, and these, whether by usurpation or delegation, are invested with the right to make laws over and for all, and to constrain the public to respect them, making use of the collective force of the community to this end.”

Errico Malatesta book Anarchy

Anarchy (1891)

People , Law , Confidence , Communication
Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo

“We can establish universally an education that recognizes in every child a tongue-tied prophet, and in the school the voice of the future, and that equips the mind to think beyond and against the established context of thought and of life as well as to move within it. We can develop a democratic politics that renders the structure of society open in fact to challenge and reconstruction, weakening the dependence of change on crisis and the power of the dead over the living. We can make the radical democratization of access to the resources and opportunities of production the touchstone of the institutional reorganization of the market economy, and prevent the market from remaining fastened to a single version of itself. We can create policies and arrangements favorable to the gradual supersession of economically dependent wage work as the predominant form of free labor, in favor of the combination of cooperation and self-employment. We can so arrange the relation between workers and machines that machines are used to save our time for the activities that we have not yet learned how to repeat and consequently to express in formulas. We can reshape the world political and economic order so that it ceases to make the global public goods of political security and economic openness depend upon submission to an enforced convergence to institutions and practices hostile to the experiments required to move, by many different paths, in such a direction.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 29

Life , Hostility , World , Education

“You can say that this is just standard partisanship, and the president’s party is always going to defend him. But what’s different about this moment is how blatant and unapologetic the incoming president is being about continuing to pursue his business interests. This is a reminder that the institutions we rely on to keep the government honest are dependent upon the integrity of the people within them.”

Paul Waldman (1968) American op-ed columnist and writer

Republicans are already making it clear: Trump can do whatever he wants (December 5, 2016)

People , Business , Dependency
Dana Gioia photo

“The time has probably come to admit that the notion of an avant-garde is no longer useful in discussing contemporary literature. How can there be an avant-garde without a mainstream? Avant-garde de quoi? one must ask. Establishment institutions — universities, museums, foundations, commercial galleries, even the state — have embraced the idea of experimental art for so long that the avant-garde is now a safely domesticated concept, just another traditional style.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Notes Toward a New Bohemia," http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ebohemia.htm transcript of a 1993 talk at the Poet's House, New York City, published in Poetry Flash (November/December 1993) and revised for publication in Grantmakers in the Arts (Spring 1994)
Essays

Art , Literature , Idea , Universe
Arun Shourie photo

“Their deceitful role in Ayodhya – which in the end harmed their clients more than anyone else – was just symptomatic. For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be today about that objective of the ICHR – to promote objective and rational research into events of our past! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal government in 1989 which Outlook itself had quoted – ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned?’ But incorporating their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist viharas, about the non-existent ‘Aryan invasion’, that is mandatory – to question them is to be communal, chauvinist! The capture of institutions like the ICHR has been bad enough, but in the end it has been a device. The major crime of these ‘historians’ has been this partisanship: suppresso veri, suggesto falsi.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Quotes , Communication , Question , Past
W. H. Auden photo

“On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our feverAre precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad and the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruinAre projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.”

W. H. Auden book Spain

Source: Spain (1937), Lines 65–76

Friendship , People , Fear , Winter
Mitt Romney photo

“My business experience confirmed my belief in empowering people. For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. My faith in people, not government, is at the foundation of my plan to strengthen America's middle class.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-23
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444270404577605140607907860.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Mitt Romney: What I Learned at Bain Capital
Wall Street Journal
2012

People , Faith , Business
Susan Cain photo

“(In writing Quiet) I was fueled by the same mix of passion and indignation that I imagine inspired Betty Friedan to publish The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time--second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent. Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts, and many introverts believe that there is something wrong with them and that they should try to "pass" as extroverts. The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Glor, Jeff (interviewer), "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking," by Susan Cain," CBS News, January 26, 2012.

Women , Men , School , Imagination
Joseph Strutt photo

“Selden asserts, and in my opinion with great justice, that all these whimsical transpositions of dignity are derived from the ancient Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn, when the masters waited upon their servants, who were honoured with mock titles, and permitted to assume the state and deportment of their lords. These fooleries were exceedingly popular, and continued to be practised long after the establishment of Christianity, in defiance of the threatenings and the remonstrances of the clergy, who, finding it impossible to divert the stream of vulgar prejudice permitted them to be exercised, but changed the primitive object of devotion; so that the same unhallowed orgies, which had disgraced the worship of a heathen deity, were dedicated, as it was called, to the service of the true God, and sanctioned by the appellation of a Christian institution. From this polluted stock branched out variety of unseemly and immoral sports; but none of them more daringly impious and outrageous to common sense, than the Festival of Fools, in which the most sacred rites and ceremonies of the church were turned into ridicule, and the ecclesiastics themselves participated in the abominable profanations.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 344
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

God , Justice , Fools , Exercises
William C. Davis photo

“The South had a far better chance of preserving its institutions and quirks of culture by remaining a part of a larger nation.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 21

Chance , Parting
George W. Bush photo

“In achieving this vision, we plan to work in close partnership with international institutions, including the United Nations; our Allies and partners; and bilateral donors. If conflict occurs, we plan to seek the adoption, on an urgent basis, of new United Nations Security Council resolutions that would affirm Iraq's territorial integrity, ensure rapid delivery of humanitarian relief, and endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq. We will also propose that the Secretary General be given authority, on an interim basis, to ensure that the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people continue to be met through the Oil for Food program.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi people (March 2003)

People , Food , Partnership
John R. Commons photo

“I do not overlook the important contributions to economic theory in the past whether orthodox or heterodox I correlate them with institutional economics. The classical and communistic economists used as their measure of value the man hour of labor. This is evidently since the incoming of scientific management the engineering economics of efficiency. The Austrian and hedonistic economists deriving from Bentham used as the measure of value the diminishing marginal utility of consumption goods. This is evidently the home economics recently introduced in the college curriculum.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: "Institutional economics," 1936, p. 242

Home , Past
William Stubbs photo

“The History of Institutions cannot be mastered – can scarcely be approached – without an effort. It affords little of the romantic incident or of the picturesque grouping which constitute the charm of History in general, and holds out small temptation to the mind that requires to be tempted to the study of Truth. But it…abounds in examples of that continuity of life, the realisation of which is necessary to give the reader a personal hold on the past and a right judgment of the present. For the roots of the present lie deep in the past, and nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is.”

William Stubbs (1825–1901) English historian and clergyman

The Constitutional History of England (1873-8; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903) vol. 1, p. iii.

Life , Truth , Lie , History
Bruce Palmer Jr. photo

“Although each of our armed services is unique and different, the U. S. Army holds a special position of significance and trust. Its ranks come from the people, the country's roots, and it is closest to the people. In foreign confrontations the United States is not committed until its land forces- its Army- is committed. And in the event of hostilities, the Army historically has borne the brunt of war, the human cost, taking the great bulk of the casualties. The Army as an institution knows this and has been traditionally reluctant to go to war, its leaders seeking to insure that war is truly necessary and that our civilian leaders exploit all other avenues before taking that final step.”

Bruce Palmer Jr. (1913–2000) United States Army Chief of Staff

Source: The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam (1984), p. 209

Hostility , War , People , Country
Clarence Thomas photo

“As such, I think that it would be in derogation of our respective oaths and our institutional obligations to our country to engage in uncivil behavior. It would also be demeaning to any of us who engages in such conduct. Having worn the robe, we have a lifetime obligation to conduct ourselves as having deserved to wear the robe in the first instance.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Behavior , Thinking , Country
Alan Keyes photo

“If you go down a road that satisfies your personal predilections and relationships and sacrifices the common good of the country, including the elementary institution by which its civilization is sustained, then you're not only derelict in your public duty, you are abandoning your obligation as a human being. And frankly, people throw around words like "crime against humanity", I think that kind of disregard for the God-endowed natural rights of human being is the archetype of all crimes against humanity, and I think we have an entire elite faction that is now committed to committing such a crime against the American people.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

2013-04-02
The Talk to Solomon Show Live, quoted in * 2013-04-02
Keyes: Marriage Equality is the 'Archetype of all Crimes Against Humanity'
Brian
Tashman
Right Wing Watch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/keyes-marriage-equality-archetype-all-crimes-against-humanity
regarding Senator Rob Portman's support of same-sex marriage after learning that his son is gay.
2009

God , People , Nature , Thinking

“Contemporary institutional theorizing in the field of organizations dates back thirty-odd years. This particularly describes what are called new or neo-institutionalisms. These terms evoke contrasts with earlier theories of the embeddedness of organizations in social and cultural contexts, now retrospectively called the ‘old institutionalism’ (Hirsch & Lounsbury, 1997; Stinchcombe, 1997). They went through a period of inattention, so that when institutional thinking came back in force after the 1960s, it seemed quite new.
Institutional theories, as they emerged in the 1970s, received much attention in the field, along with other lines of thought emphasizing the dependence of modern organizations on their environments. Perhaps surprisingly, they continue to receive attention, and seem to retain substantial measures of vigor.”

John W. Meyer (1935) Sociologist and professor at Stanford University

Source: "Reflections on institutional theories of organization,." 2008, p. 790

Thinking , Dependency
Geert Wilders photo

“We have to stop pretending that Islam is merely a religion—it is primarily a totalitarian ideology that aims to conquer the West. A free society should not grant freedom to those who want to destroy it. Every halal shop, every mosque, every Islamic school, and every burka is regarded by Islam as a step toward the ultimate goal of our submission. As such, we must close down all Islamic schools, for they are totalitarian institutions where young children are indoctrinated into an ideology of violence and hatred. We must also close down all radical mosques and forbid the construction of new mosques, which Islam regards as symbols of its triumph. And we must ban the burka—people's faces should not be hidden in society, for it is our faces that give us our identity and our fundamental means of communication with others.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

Source: 2010s, Marked for Death (2012), Ch. 13, pp. 214–215

Children , People , School , Religion
William C. Davis photo

“Southern states had embraced the Union only insofar as it served to protect their rights to hold property in slaves, and to spread slavery as the nation expanded and the institution itself became intertwined as a defining element in the struggle for national power itself. In slavery could not spread as new states were formed, then the existing slave states would be doomed to perpetual minority in representation in Congress, guaranteeing that if the day came when Northern antipathy to slavery itself became hot enough, the majority could use the government to subvert the Constitution and abolish the institution where it already existed. In short, the South could not affort to lose any battle over slavery, nor even over issues on its periphery.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 3

David Graeber photo

“By the end of World War II, the specter of an imminent working class uprising that had so haunted the ruling classes of Europe and North America for the previous century had largely disappeared. This was because class war was suspended by a tacit settlement. To put it crudely: the white working class of the North Atlantic countries, from the United States to West Germany, were offered a deal. If they agreed to set aside any fantasies of fundamentally changing the nature of the system, then they would be allowed to keep their unions, enjoy a wide variety of social benefits (pensions, vacations, health care …), and, perhaps most important, through generously funded and ever-expanding public educational institutions, know that their children had a reasonable chance of leaving the working class entirely. One key element in all this was a tacit guarantee that increases in workers' productivity would be met by increases in wages: a guarantee that held good until the late 1970s. Largely as a result, the period saw both rapidly rising productivity and rapidly rising incomes, laying the basis for the consumer economy of today.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Twelve, "1971–The Beginning…", p. 373

War , Children , Health , World
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo

“The existence of antagonistic "conspiracies" was recognized by the defenders of religious and political views. Iconoclasts knew that images might distort the basic message of their creed (which consisted of words and resided in Holy Books). Church architecture and church music were adapted to the needs of the Holy Faith. Alternative styles were either fought or made part of religious PR. I conclude that our 'field of experience' is molded, overlaid, and 'conspired' against not just by language, but by numerous other patterns and institutions, many of them in mutual conflict. An inference from a style, a particular linguistic apparatus, or, more recently, from scientific beliefs, to a cosmology, corresponding ways of life and an all-embracing "spirit of the age therefore needs special support; it cannot be made as a matter of course.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 28.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

Life , Books , Age , Faith

“Everybody wants to know about it. Even now. But look at what else I have accomplished since then which must have taken courage. Far more than what it took to streak. But because it's more immediate you think you could even do this. But you can't build a dance institute out of barren land.”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her steaking and the Nritygarma, the dance institute she established in Bangalore quoted in I have been a hippie all my life, 22 August 1998, 14 january 2014, Rediff.com http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/aug/22bedi.htm,

Courage , Thinking , Dance
Booker T. Washington photo

“We have cleared the forests, reclaimed the land, and are building cities, railroads, and great institutions.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

As quoted in Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862 (1919), by E.G. Renesch, Chicago

Alija Izetbegović photo

“There is no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions. The failure of these institutions to function and the instability of these regimes in Muslim countries, manifest in frequent changes and coups d'état, is most often the consequence of their a priori opposition to Islam, as the fundamental and foremost feeling of the people in those countries. Claiming its right to order its own world alone, Islam clearly rules out the right and the possibility of the application of any foreign ideology in its own region. there is, therefore, no lay principle, and the state ought to be a reflection of and to support the moral concepts of the religion.”

Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Source: The Islamic Declaration (1970), p. 30, as quoted in The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans, Aleksandar Pavković, Springer Science+Business Media https://books.google.com/books?id=u3paCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUhfPIl43WAhVHro8KHReTDhEQ6AEINzAD#v=onepage&q&f=false,

People , World , Peace , Faith
Perry Anderson photo

“Rawls resorted to Hegel in his internal reflections on a constitutional state. On the plane of inter-state relations, Kant remained his philosopher of reference, as the theorist of conditions for a perpetual peace. So too for Habermas. But since Kant failed to envisage the necessary legal framework for a cosmopolitan order, as it started to take shape through the permanent institutions of the United Nations, Habermas, when he came to review the progress made since 1945, also looked towards the philosopher of objective idealism. Measured against the sombre background of the disasters of the first half of the twentieth century, he decided, ‘the World Spirit, as Hegel would have put it, has lurched forward’. As we have seen, Bobbio was responsible for the most pointed appeal to Hegel of all. In one sense, he was more entitled to do so.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 7. "Arms and Rights, The Adjustable Centre" (1998)

World , Peace , Sense
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo

“The landed interest is the great foundation upon which rest the fabric of society, and the institutions of the country. I mean no disparagement to manufactures and commerce; I know how essential they are to the happiness and prosperity of the country, and how much they add even to the value of the land. But the land of the country is the country itself, and the owner of the land has the deepest and most permanent interest in its well-being; tied down to the soil, he must share the fortunes of his country, whether in its greatness or its fall.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (3 March 1831), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 172-173.
1830s

Country , Happiness
African Spir photo

“Injustice having always hold sway (- be predominant, - régné", Fr.) on earth, there are some who ("d'aucuns", Fr.) imagine (or pretend) that the existing social order may ("pourra", Fr.) subsist (or remain) for ever. Whether this order could last until now, this was mainly due to the conviction of people, that it was of divine institution. But this belief is vanishing (or disapearing, or fainting), and with it the only moral support of the actual order will collapse, leaving (or letting) only brutal forces opposed to each others clashing, with no peaceful way out (or solution) ("et avec elle s'effondrera le seul soutient moral de l'ordre présent, ne laissant aux prises que des forces brutales opposés les unes aux autres, sans issue pacifique.", Fr.)”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 45.

People , Peace , Way , Imagination
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Hysteria will not help us to solve the problem that confronts us. We overstate the danger when we say that twelve millions seek, because of post-war conditions abroad, to come immediately to America. Ending June 30, 1914, the year's immigration figures were 1,218,480. Then came the war and a vast slump, from which we are just recovering. Calculations placed immigration statistics for the current year as 1,079,428—figures still below the prewar status. But even though we need have no grave fears, now is the time for a careful reexamination and revision of our immigration policies. We should have no more aliens to cope with, in the immediate months to come, than our institutions are able to handle. To assume burdens we can not easily meet would lie unfair both to us and to the alien. In protecting ourselves we are protecting him as well. We can not lower our standards, or allow them to be lowered, so as to include him. We must prepare him for our standards. And that means wise education. In the home, in the school, in industry, in citizenship, we have not heretofore applied thoroughly the human test, and that is our next step in the Americanization of the alien. Much work has yet to be done in the immediate months to come. Some protective measure, therefore, seems necessary.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

War , Lie , Education , Fear
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“The fifth and most important principle of our foreign policy is support of national independence—the right of each people to govern themselves—and to shape their own institutions. For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks the way that it has chosen to walk for itself. We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule. We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression of one race by another. We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West. The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of today's world in which we live. In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those who would subdue others to their ideas or their will. It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire. In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject them to the ambitions of mainland China. History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or belief—unless force is used to make it so. That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba—and tonight in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Hostility , People , World , Peace
L. Ron Hubbard photo

“A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children are actually attempted abortion cases... However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God... All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Dianetics : The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950)

God , Children , Sex
Willem de Sitter photo

“It was early 1932, when Einstein and I both were at the California Institute of Technology in Pasedena, and we just decided to look for a simple relativistic model that agreed reasonably well with the known observational data, namely, the Hubble recession rate and the mean density of matter in the universe. So we took the space curvature to be zero and also the cosmological constant and the pressure term to be zero, and then it follows straightforwardly that the density is proportional to the square of the Hubble constant. It gives a value for the density that is high, but not impossibly high. That's about all there was to it. It was not an important paper, although Einstein apparently thought that it was. He was pleased to have a simple model with no cosmological constant. That's it.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

As quoted by Helge Kragh, Masters of the Universe: Conversations with Cosmologists of the Past (2014)

Universe
Roger Scruton photo

“The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevertheless, few people seem to understand this truth.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Rousseau & the origins of liberalism," https://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rousseau-the-origins-of-liberalism-2988 The New Criterion (October 1998).

People , Truth , World , Understanding
Muhammad of Ghor photo

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Life , Secret , World , Justice

“Galileo had provided the methodology for the analysis of motions on and near the earth and had applied it successfully. Copernicus and Kepler had previously obtained the laws of motion of the planets and their satellites. …But Galileo had succeeded in deriving numerous laws from a few physical principles and… the axioms and theorems of mathematics. …The Keplerian laws …were not logically related to each other. Each was an independent inference from observations. …They seemed to be suspended in the same vacuum in which the planets moved.
Galileo's laws had the additional advantage of supplying physical insight. The first law of motion and the law that the force of graviation gives… a downward acceleration of 32 ft/sec2… explain the vertrical rise and fall of bodies, motion on slopes, and projectile motion. Kepler's laws… had no physical basis. …Kepler tried to introduce the idea of a magnetic force which the sun exerted… But he failed to related the behavior of the planets to the precise laws of planetary motion. …
The new astronomical theory was completely isolated from the theory of motion on earth. …it bothered mathematicians and scientists who believed that all the phenomena of the universe were governed by one master plan instituted by the master planner—God.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and the Physical World (1959), pp. 224-225

God , Law , Behavior , Mathematics
Werner Erhard photo

“I am a sort of revolutionary. I have a strange ambition, though. I don’t want any statues. What I want is for the world to work. I want to create a context in which government, education, and families are nurturing. I want to en­able, to empower, the institutions of man. Social transformation doesn’t argue against social change. Radicalism and resistance produce obvious values. But after a while, social change chases its own tail. Social change just produces social change. After most ordinary revolutions, after most social change, the world still doesn’t work. For the world to work you must have social transformation, which creates the space for effective social change.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]

World , Education , Family , Change
William Penn photo

“Government seems to me to be a part of religion itself — a thing sacred in its institutions and ends.”

William Penn (1644–1718) English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania

Preface to the Charter of Liberties and Frame of Government of the Province of Pennsylvania in America (5 May 1682).
Frame of Government (1682)

Religion , Parting
Elizabeth May photo

“The increasing prominence of a presidential-style prime minister is steadily denigrating the traditions and institutions of Canadian democracy.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

Introduction, p. 8
Losing Confidence - Power, politics, And The Crisis In Canadian Democracy (2009)

Democracy
Stephen A. Douglas photo

“The framers of the Constitution well understood that each locality, having separate and distinct interests, required separate and distinct laws, domestic institutions, and police regulations adapted to its own wants and its own condition; and they acted on the presumption, also, that these laws and institutions would be as diversified and as dissimilar as the States would be numerous, and that no two would be precisely alike, because the interests of no two would be precisely the same.”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Speech in Chicago, Illinois (9 July 1858)
1850s

Law

“Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life." American political science review 78.03 (1983): 734-749.

Life , Behavior , History , Idea
Albert Barnes photo

“Christianity may produce agitation, anger, tumult as at Ephesus; but the diffusion of the pure gospel of Christ, and the establishment of the institutions of honesty and virtue, at whatever cost, is a blessing to mankind.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 134.

Christ , Anger

“The only thing that makes the modern sciences elevated beyond epistemic procedures seen in other times and other cultures is the fact that there is a mechanism beyond human political manipulation for the elimination of defective theories. Karl Popper is on that level just totally right. If it’s politically negotiable, it’s useless, it’s unscientific by definition. You don’t trust scientists, you don’t trust scientific theories, you don’t trust scientific institutions in so far as they have integrity, what you trust is the disintegrated zone of criticism and the criteria for criticism and evaluation in terms of repeated experiments, in terms of the heuristics that are built up to decide whether a particular theory has been defeated and eliminated by a superior theory. It’s that mechanism of selection that is the only thing that makes science important and makes it a system of reality testing. And this is obviously intrinsically directed against any kind of organic political community aiming to internally determine—through its own processes—the negotiation of the nature of reality. Reality has to be an external disruptive critical factor.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"‘The Only Thing I Would Impose is Fragmentation’ Interview with Nick Land" https://syntheticzero.net/2017/06/19/the-only-thing-i-would-impose-is-fragmentation-an-interview-with-nick-land/ (2017)

Communication , Nature , Reality , Science
Peter DeFazio photo

“The University of Oregon has long been known as a renowned research institution. The Brain, Biology and Machine Initiative continues in that distinguished tradition.”

Peter DeFazio (1947) American politician

Peter DeFazio (June 21, 2006), DeFazio Secures $8 Million For Research At Oregon Universities: He also secured $2.5 million for the Northwest Manufacturing Initiative and $2.7 million for the Metals Affordability Initiative http://www.defazio.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=124&Itemid=65, Website, Congressman Peter DeFazio, United States House of Representatives.

Universe

“Social, political and economic institutions have become larger, considerably more complex and resourceful, and prima facie more important to collective life. Many of the major actors in modern economic and political systems are formal organizations, and the institutions of law and bureaucracy occupy a dominant role in contemporary life.”

Johan Olsen (1939) Norwegian political scientist

James G. March and Johan Olsen, (1989) Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics. New York: Free Press. p. 1-2

Life , Law
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo

“Among those who voted Brexit, there is still support for Parliament and its traditional sovereignty, for the monarchy, for the NHS, and for the Union. As the Copeland by-election showed, they prefer to vote Conservative rather than Ukip, and as the Stoke result indicates, many will grudgingly vote Labour rather than Ukip. What they wish to see is a democratic politics that represents their interests. If this is populism then it is of a muted English variety that wishes to see the renewal of national institutions and a recognition that family, place and work—the things that matter to them—matter to their rulers.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Prospect Magazine, Why Brexit is a chance for national renewal, 13 March 2017 https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/why-brexit-is-a-chance-for-national-renewal

Family , Support
Kent Hovind photo

“The Smithsonian Institute has 33,000 sets of human remains in their basement … Many of them were taken while the people were still alive. They were so desperate to find missing links, so desperate to prove their theory that they murdered people to prove it. It was the philosophy of evolution that drove them.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

People

“The employee-oriented supervisor, in contrast to the production-oriented, or institution-oriented supervisor gives major attention to creating employee motivation. The specific ways in which he does this may vary from situation to situation, but they contribute to a supportive personal relationship between himself and his work group members”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 562

Way , Motivation , Support , Personality
Adam Smith photo

“But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter IV, p. 448.

“The institutional leader, then, is primarily an expert in the promotion and protection of values.”

Philip Selznick (1919–2010) American sociologist

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 28

African Spir photo

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

Life , Men , Hostility , War
Mordehai Milgrom photo

“What struck me was some regularity in the anomaly. The rotational velocities were not just larger than expected, they became constant with radius. Why? Sure, if there was dark matter, the speed of stars would be greater, but the rotation curves, meaning the rotational speed drawn as a function of the radius, could still go up and down depending on its distribution. But they didn't. That really struck me as odd. So, in 1980, I went on my Sabbatical in the Institute for Advance Studies in Princeton with the following hunch: If the rotational speeds are constant, then perhaps we’re looking at a new law of nature. If Newtonian physics can’t predict the fixed curves, perhaps we should fix Newton, instead of making up a whole new class of matter just to fit our measurements.”

Mordehai Milgrom (1946) Israeli physicist

"The Physicist Who Denies that Dark Matter Exists," 2017

Law , Star , Nature , Study
Frederick Douglass photo

“I deny and utterly scout the idea, that there is now, properly speaking, any such thing as a negro problem before the American people. It is not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelligent or ignorant, who is on trial, or whose qualities are giving trouble to the nation… The real question, the all-commanding question, is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American Christianity can be made to include and protect, alike and forever, all American citizens… It is whether this great nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself during the late war, or shall swing back to its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The trouble is that the colored people have still to contend against ’a fierce and formidable foe,’ the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried institution.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

War , People , Truth , Education

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Children , Lie , Age , World
Alex Salmond photo

“There is a need to renew our economic institutions and the principles which guide them. Parts of the financial sector, we now know, were run on a false prospectus. With the rewards to some individuals completely divorced from basic ideas of fairness, or service. And, as it transpires, sadly those rewards were also divorced from any reasonable notion of lasting value. That could not be sustained. And it was not sustained.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

Idea , Parting , Falseness
Carl Bernstein photo

“The reality is that the media are probably the most powerful of all our institutions today and they, or rather we [journalists], too often are squandering our power and ignoring our obligations. The consequence of our abdication of responsibility is the ugly spectacle of idiot culture!”

Carl Bernstein (1944) American journalist

The best obtainable version of the truth http://www.riasberlin.de/rcom-pubs/rcus-pubs-news4-98.html, Carl Bernstein's talk at the annual convention of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, 1998-09-26.

Reality
Friedrich Hayek photo

“If craftsmen and blacksmiths were feared for transforming material substance, if traders were feared for transforming such intangible qualities as value, how much more will the banker be feared for the transformations he effects with the most abstract and immaterial of all economic institutions? Thus we reach the climax of the progressive replacement of the perceivable and concrete by abstract concepts shaping rules guiding activity: money and its institutions seem to be beyond the boundary of laudable and understandable physical efforts of creation, in a realm where the comprehension of the concrete ceases and incomprehensible abstractions rule.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Source: 1980s and later, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p.102

Money , Fear , Understanding , Effort

“The managers will exercise their control over the instruments of production and gain preference in the distribution of the products, not directly, through property rights vested in them as individuals, but indirectly, through their control of the state which in turn will own and control the instruments of production. The state – that is, the institutions which comprise the state – will if we wish to put it that way, be the “property” of the managers’.”

James Burnham (1905–1987) American philosopher

Source: The Managerial Revolution, 1941, p. 71–72; As cited in: Stijn Maria Verhagen (2005). Zorglogica’s uit balans. p. 300

Way , Exercises
Herbert Marcuse photo

“Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal,” the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the “concept” of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 133-134

Truth , Justice , Search , Knowledge

“Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.”

Johan Olsen (1939) Norwegian political scientist

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life." American political science review 78.03 (1983): 734-749; Abstract.

Life , Behavior , History , Idea
Benjamin Stanton photo

“Another portion say that, if a Republican President is elected, they will secede from the confederacy, and organize a separate and independent Confederacy of their own. Whether that constitutes treason or not, is a matter of opinion, and may be a matter of controversy; but it is, nevertheless, equally fatal to the perpetuity of the existing Government and the existing institutions of the country.”

Benjamin Stanton (1809–1872) American politician

Speech (1860)

Country
Leopoldo Galtieri photo

“The dispatch of a naval force and the peremptory outcome that Great Britain tried to impose are clear demonstrations that that country persists in addressing the question with arguments based on force, and that the solution is sought through the simple refusal to recognize Argentinian rights. In view of that unacceptable intention, the Argentine Government could have no other response than the one it has just made by taking action. The Argentinian position can in no way be considered a form of aggression against the present inhabitants of the islands. Their rights and ways of life will be respected with the same generosity with which we respected those peoples we liberated during our independence movement. Yet we will not yield to the intimidatory deployment of the British forces; far from using peaceful diplomatic channels, they have threatened the indiscriminate use of those forces. Our forces will act only to the extent strictly necessary. They will in no way disrupt the life of the islanders. On the contrary, they will protect those institutions and persons who agree to coexist with us, but they will not tolerate any excesses either in the islands or on the mainland. We have a clear appreciation of the stance adopted and it is in defence of this stance that the Argentine nation has risen, the whole nation, spiritually and materially.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982

Life , People , Peace , Way
Ilham Aliyev photo

“We have had significant achievements in political, economic and social spheres. A transparent public relations system has been created in our country, and the activity of democratic institutions, human rights and freedoms have been ensured. Legislation that meets international requirements, effective operation of specialized institutional structures, and ensuring transparency in public administration are the successes of our anti-corruption policy.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

President Ilham Aliyev's opening letter to participants of the Third Meeting of the Heads of Anti-Corruption Organizations and Ombudsmen of the Economic Cooperation Organization Member States (6 June 2017) http://www.today.az/print/news/politics/161995.html
Anti-corruption policy

Freedom , Success , Country
Aldo Capitini photo

““The two main directions of modern ethics with their affirmation of the importance of individual conscience and the extension of moral concern for all rational beings, as worthy of equal rights, imply a hard struggle to deny absolute value to ecclesiastical or state institutions.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Hymn

Kenneth Arrow photo

“While economic theory in general may be defined as the theory of how an economic condition or an economic development is determined within an institutional framework, the welfare theory deals with how to judge whether one condition can be said to be better in some way than another and whether it is possible, by altering the institutional framework, to achieve a better condition than the present one.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Arrow and Hicks (1972) From Nobel Lectures, Economics 1969-1980, Editor Assar Lindbeck, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1992 ( online http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1972/presentation-speech.html)
1970s-1980s

Way
Manuel Castells photo

“Cultures are not made from free-floating values. They are rooted in institutions and organizations.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 2, The Culture of the Internet, p. 48

Maulana Karenga photo

“I have been blessed to see my work flourish. Many people in history — Marcus Garvey, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X — never lived to see their work flourish. I have seen people around the world embrace my philosophy and principles, involving themselves in a cultural institution that my organization and I created. That's something.”

Maulana Karenga (1941) Political activist

"The Man Who Invented Kwanzaa" in Ebony (January 1998)

People , World , History
Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“The heart of the great dispensation of Jesus has survived not necessarily in any temporal power of an outer institution, but in those great devotees and saints whose protracted devotions and meditations established within them temples of Christ Consciousness and God-communion…
It is such saints and masters who have actually communed with God — those known to history as well as countless anonymous true souls devoted to Christ, hidden in monasteries and convents in wholehearted consecration — who have verily been the "rock" on which Jesus' inner church of Christ communion has endured these two thousand years.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

God , Soul , History , Communication

“We will consider the facts about postwar Indochina insofar as they can be ascertained, but a major emphasis will be on the ways in which these facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted or modified by the ideological institutions in the West.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, with Noam Chomsky, 1979, p. vii.

Way
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

World , School , Art , Nature
Shripad Yasso Naik photo

“AYUSH can definitely help as ayurveda has special medicinal syrups in this regard. Already 5,000-6,000 people have received the medicine at Rajasthan. The National Institute of Ayurveda at Rajasthan has already sent batches of that medicine to different states and we have also requested them to send the same to other states.”

Shripad Yasso Naik (1952) Indian politician

On the role of Ayurveda during the 2015 Indian swine flu outbreak, as quoted in " Swine flu: Government sending ayurvedic medicines to states, says Shripad Naik http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-02-20/news/59339772_1_international-yoga-day-isolation-wards-ayush-ministry", The Economic Times (20 February 2015)

People , Help
Noam Chomsky photo

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Z Magazine, May 1998 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199805--.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Way , Democracy , Decision
Norbert Wiener photo

“As to sociology and anthropology, it is manifest that the importance of information and communication as mechanisms of organization proceeds beyond the individual into the community. On the other hand, it is completely impossible to understand social communities such as those of ants without a thorough investigation of their means of communication, and we were fortunate enough to have the aid of Dr. Schneirla in this matter. For the similar problems of human organization, we sought help from the anthropologists Drs. Bateson and Margaret Mead; while Dr. Morgenstern of the Institute for Advanced Study was our adviser in the significant field of social organization belong to economic theory. His very important joint book on games with Dr. von Neumann, by the way, represents a most interesting study of social organization from the point of view of methods closely related to, although distinct from, the subject matter of cybernetics. Dr. Lewin and others represented the newer work on the theory of opinion sampling and the practice of opinion making, and Dr. F. C. S. Northrup was interested in assaying the philosophical significance of our work.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

Introduction. p. 18-19
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Books , Way , Game , Communication