Barack Obama Quotes

We've got a thousand lobbyists in thousand dollar suits giving you a thousand reasons we can't change.

As a black woman, I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful; the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change.

I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.

I'm a harsh critic of the status quo.

Professional opinion is almost inevitably against changes.

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

The elites benefit from affirmative action programs even when those programs are designed to help the masses.

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

In the absence of a crisis, the status quo in Washington is more or less set in cement, as advocacy groups and turf-conscious government officials are able to thwart change.

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

If you want to really change something, do not try to fight the existing reality. create a new reality.

What people don't know about oppression is that the oppressor works much harder. You always grew up being told you were not smart enough or not fast enough, but we all lived from the time we were children to beat the system.

The friend of the present order of things condemns all political speculations in the gross.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

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.

In the Tea Party narrative, victory at the polls means a new American revolution, one that will 'take our country back' from everyone they disapprove of. But what they don't realize is, there's a catch: This is America, and we have an entrenched oligarchical system in place that insulates us all from any meaningful political change.

Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.

The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help. The wealthy have weak incentives to get the right amount of the right thing to those who need it; the poor are in no position to complain if they don’t.

Lobbying, in large part, is conducted to prevent change from happening.

The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.

The urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.

Every single change is fought by those who would be affected by it.

Stasis ... is the norm in American social policy, and innovations ... are the exceptions.

Politicians are becoming mouthpieces for other forces justifying the status quo.

If this country ever had a military of the poor, it no longer does.