David Kay Quotes

Some of those men in power, we just have to change their faces because we're not going to change their minds.

I suggest that instead of criticising us, the establishment has a bloody good look at itself.

The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.

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

In order for a president to be transformational, the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves.

You can live within the institutions and work hard to change them.

It's tempting, when confronted by political malfeasance, to become so absorbed with its symptom that we give too little attention to treating its cause.

I'm not taking power. I'm catalyzing systemic change.

We should put this one-man show behind us. Instead of talking about individuals we should at last be talking about institutions and laws.

You cannot just change regimes; you have to change mindsets.

Institutions are more important than the individual leaders.

We do not yet have a politics that is equal to the economics around us.

We’re the Republican Party in charge of every part of the this government. We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

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

… the process of social change was not merely a matter of new inventions pressing on old institutions: it was a matter of new classes displacing old.

We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.

It is true that [the] present-day young are idealistic. But theirs is the easy idealism that condemns abuses and pushes aside any thought that would reveal the difficulties and complexities inherent in righting wrongs. They are not willing to do the hard work by which alone the world can be improved. Hearing what they say, and seeing what they do, one suspects that one of the main functions of the young’s idealism is finding good reasons for doing bad things.

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.

In my reporting, I've found that real change escapes many change-makers because powerful illusions guide their projects.

I hoped that Obama would be a delivery vehicle for change on issues I care about, but I never expect one politician to be the solution to the diverse array of issues I care about.

When rooted, you observe how systems actually affect people.

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

I have been obsequious toward Western civilization, exaggerating its merits and, at the same time, exaggerating my own merits.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think - even the activists - that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: 'Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn't stop the war so what's the use of doing it again?'

I don't want to negotiate with the power brokers in Washington; I want to tear them down.