Mac Thornberry Quotes

Entrenched bureaucracies are always opposed to fundamental changes.

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.

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

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.

My sense was that most of the elected officials in Washington - in their heart of hearts - really believe that the system can't be too bad because it produced them.

Washington has become this place that people don't leave. It has become this permanent feudal class.

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

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

The establishment can't change. It can't give people anything different; it can't make the turn.

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

Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.

When someone in power declares that something is broken that means it's actually fine. What they're really saying is, "Let's change this so I like it and ruin it." Nothing is ever broken.

Never underestimate the magnitude of the power of the forces that reinforce the status quo.

People.. especially people in positions of power.. have invested a tremendous amount of effort and time to get to where they are. They really don't want to hear that we're on the wrong path, that we've got to shift gears and start thinking differently.

Any great change must expect opposition, because it shakes the very foundation of privilege.

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.

The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.

Ninety-eight percent are boxes, which tells me that a lot of people are in denial. We live and work in boxes. People don't even notice that. Most of what's around us is banal. We live with it. We accept it as inevitable. People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

The bureaucracies that are in place now, they're not going to change, they're not going to stop.

Established systems are inherently hostile to change.

People say, "This is the world the way it is, and don't bother me." Then when somebody does something different, real architecture, the push-back is amazing. People resist it. At first it's new and scary.

If you're changing the status quo, whatever move you make is disrupting something else.

Some of my fellow academics are very hostile, but I sympathize with them. They've been asleep for 500 years and they don't like anybody who comes along and stirs them up.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.