Quotes About Institutions

Institutions, no less than persons, may need to be socialized.

We still don't have a good word to describe what is missing in Cameroon, indeed in poor countries across the world. But we are starting to understand what it is. Some people call it 'social capital, or maybe 'trust'. Others call it 'the rule of law', or 'institutions'. But these are just labels. The problem is that Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy world in which it's in most people's interest to take action that directly or indirectly damages everyone else.

The fall of the short-lived Weimar Republic, and the subsequent rise of Nazi power, tells us that there is a danger to whittling down the power of our institutions when we cannot yet foresee what will replace them.

Life still begins in the womb, cocky erections still collapse and lie useless when woman's superior sexuality is finished with them, but men control the divine channels now, and while that control may be largely an illusion, their laws, institutions, and elaborate weaponry exist primarily to maintain it.

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.

Every other institution in society is built on the family. If the family disintegrates, those institutions that depend on strong families will disintegrate as well. Once that happens, there is no law you can pass that will make up for the devastation. There is no program you can institute that will fix what happens to people when a home is shattered. There is no politician you can elect who can bring harmony and social order when the family is decimated.

The absence of trust is clearly inimical to a well-run society. The great Jane Jacobs noted as much with respect to the very practical business of urban life and the maintenance of cleanliness and civility on city streets. If we don't trust each other, our towns will look horrible and be nasty places to live. Moreover, she observed, you cannot institutionalize trust. Once corroded, it is virtually impossible to restore.

while many people were irritated at over-mighty trade unions or insensitive bureaucrats, they were unwilling to countenance a wholesale retreat. The social democratic consensus and its institutional incarnations might be boring and even paternalist; but they worked and people knew it.

The reign of terror abated, though not the institutions and practices to which it had given rise: the Gulag was still in place, and tens of thousands of political prisoners still languished in camps and in exile—half of them Ukrainians.

Beneficiaries of the welfare states whose institutions they call into question, they are all Thatcher's children: politicians who have overseen a retreat from the ambitions of their predecessors.

But it was the very reassurance that such men held out to their own constituency that allowed them to dismantle the authoritarian institutions they had once loyally served. And they, in turn, were succeeded by Socialists—Soáres, González, Papandreou—who convincingly reassured their own supporters of their unbroken radical credentials while implementing moderate and often unpopular economic policies forced upon them by circumstances.

Capitalism, as it had emerged in the Atlantic world and Western Europe over the course of four centuries, was accompanied by laws, institutions, regulations and practices upon which it was critically dependent for its operation and its legitimacy. In many post-Communist countries such laws and institutions were quite unknown—and dangerously underestimated by neophyte free-marketers there.

default position, synagogues need to take what they do best—if they can indeed do them better than any other institution in the Jewish landscape—and locate their "brand" in the broader community. Synagogues need to be open to those issues that are engaging people in contexts outside the synagogues. For example, there is a growing interest in food justice issues, particularly among millennials, yet few synagogues have built their programs around this issue.

Synagogue Leaders 1. If people are attracted to Judaism and want to convert to Judaism, are we willing to make conversion more accessible? If so, how would we do so? 2. How can we allow people who are attracted to Jewish ideas to engage our community institutions even if they don't want to convert to Judaism? 3. What program changes need to happen for our institutions to effectively share Jewish thought in the marketplace?

The glue that holds together institutions and processes as they undergo massive decentering is cheap, ubiquitous communication.

I could continue with a list of other challenges faced by our current religious institutions, but addressing these three areas would be a great start toward improving the lives of Black males: Stop thinking of divinity as limited to the confines of a building. Stop building our faith on fear of damnation. Stop seeking personal salvation above the good of the whole.

In all moments of major technological change, people, companies, and institutions feel the depth of the change, but they are often overwhelmed by it, out of sheer ignorance of its effects".52 Being overwhelmed due to ignorance is precisely what we should avoid, particularly when it comes to how the many diverse communities that comprise modern society form, develop and relate to one another.

To paraphrase Madeleine Albright, we face the task of understanding and governing 21st-century technologies with a 20th-century mindset and 19th-century institutions.

The lesson of history, then, is that even as institutions and policy makers improve, there will always be a temptation to stretch the limits. Just as an individual can go bankrupt no matter how rich she starts out, a financial system can collapse under the pressure of greed, politics, and profits no matter how well regulated it seems to be.

Our most widely known scholars have been trained in universities outside of the South. Northern and Western institutions, however, have had no time to deal with matters which concern the Negro especially. They must direct their attention to the problems of the majority of their constituents, and too often they have stimulated their prejudices by referring to the Negro as unworthy of consideration.

Some one recently inquired as to why the religious schools do not teach the people how to tolerate differences of opinion and to cooperate for the common good. This, however, is the thing which these institutions have refused to do.

in the event of an "authoritarian revolution," authoritarians may seek massive social change in pursuit of greater oneness and sameness, willingly overturning established institutions and practices that their (psychologically) conservative peers would be drawn to defend and preserve.

too much dystopianism, too frequently or easily deployed, has its own costs. It's important to distinguish policies we don't like from policies that attempt a fundamental transformation of political institutions. That's true for purposes of conserving critical resources. But it's also true for purposes of drawing public attention and debate.

By rebuilding community, we become proud of our society, proud of our institutions, proud of our nations, proud of ourselves. By coming together we discover who we are. We ignite our capacity for empathy and altruism. Togetherness and belonging allow us to become the heroes of the story.