Quotes About Institutions

According to Hannah Arendt, the foremost scholar of totalitarianism, a totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is.

Este es el momento en el que Occidente pasó del estadio que el sociólogo Zygmunt Bauman llamó «modernidad sólida» —un periodo en el que el cambio social aún era relativamente predecible y manejable— al de «modernidad líquida», nuestra condición actual, en la que los cambios son tan rápidos que las instituciones sociales no tienen tiempo para cuajar y consolidarse19.

La democracia solo puede triunfar si prosperan instituciones intermedias, como las Iglesias.

Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, "it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites" working through their "well-developed networks and powerful institutions."24 This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse.

The disposition, in any conflict, to side with 'them' against 'us', and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably 'ours'. Being the opposite of xenophobia I propose to call this state of mind oikophobia, by which I mean (stretching the Greek a little) the repudiation of inheritance and home.

All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.

I had made it my chief aim in Africa to hinder the spreading of our poisons — of our absurd political notions of democracy, self-government, parliamentary institutions, political parties, and all that threatened the African way of life and the traditions of the African tribes. I was here to watch over a pastoral civilization, to prevent it from going our way, and I was ready to do anything to carry out my self-appointed task.

The period from the ninth century in the subcontinent, far from being 'dark', was a period of illumination as it was germane to many later institutions.

You can almost see voters nodding their heads at home: The public's faith in politicians and political institutions has been on a steep and dangerous decline for decades, because elected leaders fail to deliver.

In addition to Eisenhower identifying the military-industrial complex, we now have the police-industrial complex, the medical-industrial complex, the surveillance-industrial complex, and the media-industrial complex.

Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance.

Marriage is not a human invention. Nor is it some uniquely Christian idea. Marriage is central to the order of creation. Marriage and the nuclear and extended families that flow from marriage are simply the way the Creator designed reality. Marriage and family are universal human institutions essential to the well-being of all people everywhere.

We tell ourselves that a central project of law and political institutions is the reduction of violence, but this is mostly a fairly tale. Law and politics play a role in structuring violence, but rarely "reduce" it.

That was what had changed, he thought. To love posterity and the great institutions you had to believe in the wisdom of men. You had to love them as a child might, gazing upward.

There really are people, and institutions made up of people, who respond with hatred in the presence of goodness and would destroy the good insofar as it is in their power to do so. They do this not with conscious malice but blindly, lacking awareness of their own evil—indeed, seeking to avoid any such awareness.

Invenções há, que se transformam ou acabam; as mesmas instituições morrem; o relógio é definitivo e perpétuo. O derradeiro homem, ao despedir-se do sol frio e gasto, há de ter um relógio na algibeira, para saber a hora exata em que morre.

Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security. But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessings stronger than cursing.

There's something truly strange about living in a historical moment in which the conservative anxiety and despair about queers bringing down civilization and its institutions (marriage, most notably) is met by the anxiety and despair so many queers feel about the failure or incapacity of queerness to bring down civilization and its institutions.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don't spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options.

We spend a lot of time thinking about the ways that prestige and resources and belonging to elite institutions make us better off. We don't spend enough time thinking about the ways in which those kinds of material advantages limit our options. Vivek

The central components of the "institutional approach" outlined here – the adoption of a central focus on institutions, process, social control, new psychological foundations, and empirical and instrumental "scientific" investigation – serve as a reference point to identify the movement and its adherents.

And just because you have colleges and universities doesn't mean you have education.

If whole societies and polities are to adapt then the necessary decisions will need to be made collectively, within political institutions, as happens in wartime or national emergencies. After all, isn't that what politics, in its most fundamental form, is about? Collective survival and the preservation of the body politic?

One cannot be free, never, not ever, in an unfree world, and in the course of redefining family, church, power relations, all the institutions which inhabit and order our lives, there is no way to hold onto privilege and comfort. To attempt to do so is destructive, criminal, and intolerable.