Lucretia Mott Quotes

Inertia is a powerful force in human and political affairs.

In every truth, the beneficiaries of a system cannot be expected to destroy it.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

I realised how much the system did not want to change.

For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new.

We don't hear much from revolutionary feminists who are white because they're not serving the bourgeois agenda of the status quo.

The problem is that too often the only people who can act don't want change. Power doesn't so much corrupt as it breeds conservatism.

I would say first of all, anyone who wants to challenge the status quo always gets that response. Ninety percent of the time, that's just bull. That's just the way in which people choose to prop up their own privilege or their own particular position. So mostly I shrug it off.

Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about.

There is resistance to change. There's a resistance to ideas.

As women, we know that we must always find ways to change the process because the present institutions want to hold on to power and keep the status quo.

Latin Americans glorify their past so ceaselessly that they make it almost impossible to advocate change.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change - even though they don't really know what they're trying to prevent - then you can get pessimistic.

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear.

There are people and interests that do not want change. It is not in their interest for this system to change.

France has chosen to ignore the great transformation of the 21st century and cultivate a [culture of] status quo and rigidity.

Our elite has not evolved in 20 years, and the instincts of this elite are not democratic.

It is easier to fix roads and train police than to change the deep-rooted incentives and habits of those in power.

[Independent Federal] agencies, like other bureaucracies don’t like being transformed.. They have cultures and they want to preserve those cultures.

A revolution is generally only evolution--an explosive sequence of events crowded into a short space of time, but leaving more of the ancient regime untouched than usually is at first apparent.

Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it.

Global elites need to recognize that the masses that they spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to their consultations

Major political parties have a role, but they are incapable of initiating fundamental change because they are fundamentally tied to the status quo. They are the status quo.