Status Quo Quotes

• Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.

  Ronald Reagan

  Business, Latin, Political

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

  Voltaire

  Optimistic, Optimism, One Day

  "Voltaire: Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne". Book by Voltaire (translated), 1756.

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• A leader who loves status quo soon becomes a follower.

  John C. Maxwell

  Leader, Followers

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• If you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo.

  Seth Godin

  Upset, Ifs

  "The tribes we lead". TED Talks, www.ted.com. February 2009.

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• In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Warning, Painful, Spite

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• One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Change, Sleep

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• People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

  Max Eastman

  People, Diversity, Favors

  Max Eastman (1951). “Enjoyment of Poetry with Anthology”

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• Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently - they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Motivational, Change

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• We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends tacit validity to this status quo. People have morally identified with a subset of humanity rather than with humanity as a whole.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, People, Humanity

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• I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Eye, Insanity, Enlightenment

  "A chat about the novel 'Fight Club'". www.cnn.com. October 27, 1999.

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• In spite of warnings, change rarely occurs until the status quo becomes more painful than change. People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Character, People, Warning

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• Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and woman who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will least forever or else are so frightened it won't, that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.

  Henry Miller

  Men, Class, Waiting

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• Our religious institutions have far too often become handmaidens of the status quo, while the genuine religious experience is anything but that. True religion is by nature disruptive of
  what has been, giving birth to the eternally new.

  Marianne Williamson

  Religious, Giving, Religion

  Marianne Williamson (1994). “Illuminata: A Return to Prayer”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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• The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

  H. L. Mencken

  Country, War, Men

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• Where evil men would seek to perpetuate
  an unjust status quo,
  good men must seek to bring into being
  a real order of justice.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Real, Men, Order

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• It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There's a certain boldness to inaction.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Bravery, Kind, Certain

  Karen Thompson Walker (2012). “The Age of Miracles: A Novel”, p.78, Random House

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• In fact, people themselves are responsible for making the status quo so resistant to change. We are trapped by our own behavior.

  Chris Argyris

  People, Facts, Management

  Chris Argyris (2010). “Organizational Traps: Leadership, Culture, Organizational Design”, p.10, OUP Oxford

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• Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Sarcastic, Time, Sarcasm

  1978 In the San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Jan.

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• I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.

  Johnny Cash

  Mean, Ideas, People

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• For any student of history, change is the law of life. Any attempt to contain it guarantees an explosion down the road; the more rigid the adherence to the status quo, the more violent the ultimate outcome will be.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Law, Guarantees, Outcomes

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• At least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you'll never begin.

  Seth Godin

  Old Things, Needs, Alternatives

  Seth Godin (2008). “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us”, p.93, Penguin

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• Professional opinion is skeptical about anything that doesn't fit in with the version of reality it has been programmed to believe in. The skepticism comes from a lack of understanding and the need to defend the status quo and not from actual knowledge of the subject.

  David Icke

  Believe, Reality, Understanding

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

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Voice, Church

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1968). “I Have a Dream: The Quotations of Martin Luther King, Jr”

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• We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.

  Seth Godin

  Needs, Students, Embrace

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• Unfortunately, the world has taken some of the greatest minds God has given us and locked them up in cages. Most very brilliant or creative people seem strange to ordinary people. Geniuses are almost always outcasts. The intelligent are bullied on the playground. They see the world differently and are shunned for it. They nearly all turn out to be lonely at the least, locked up at the worst. It's human nature to encourage the status quo and shun those who see life differently.

  Ted Dekker

  Lonely, Taken, Intelligent

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