institutional constraints Quotes

Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world.

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better... Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.

With a good [political] system, even evil men cannot do evil.

The kind of problems we're facing now, no government can fix.

I still consider myself a very spiritual person but the structure of the church isn't really for me.

The instruments of state prove too big to do the small things and too small to do the big things.

I find it remarkable that virtually all of the large difference in labor supply between France and the United States is due to differences in tax systems. I expected institutional constraints on the operation of labor markets and the nature of the unemployment benefit system to be more important. I was surprised that the welfare gain from reducing the intratemporal tax wedge is so large.

No government at any level has all the answers.

With the best will, no one can be an official and a man.

Craft is not a category; it's a means. The folks running the museum [Museum of Arts and Design]are sharp, and they know this, but they are in a bind.

The office of the president is the most powerful in the world. It is also, at times, the most powerless.

Each man must have his "I"; it is more necessary to him than bread; and if he does not find scope for it within the existing institutions he will be likely to make trouble.

Journalists, by and large, are not the irascible free thinkers of lore, going their own way without fear or favor. Corporate institutions as a rule have limited use for such people. Especially in today’s electronic environment, journalists are creatures of availability bias, to borrow a term from social science. They believe what others in their milieu believe, say what others are saying, because it’s in their interest to do so.

From Nato to the U.N. and the E.U., the generation that lived through the first half of the 20th century knew they needed to create a new world order. An order with rules and institutions which, however imperfect, could act both as constraints on individual countries going rogue and as catalysts for co-operation for mutual benefit.

This kind of thing always amazed Ginny--people who just walked away from institutions. People who left school when they didn't see the point. Aunt Peg had done that. Ginny knew she never would. That either made her someone who worked hard and finished things, or someone who didn't have the guts to break away from the pack. Maybe both.

We have to save ourselves from ourselves. We have to minimize the effect our own politicians can have on our society. We have to get some rules from the outside.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

I went to law school. I found it interesting for the first three weeks. By the fourth week, I found it tedious. I got bored and grew restless. I had no other plan for a job, because from seventh grade on, I had planned on law. So I shifted my focus from classes to extracurricular activities.

Does management resist the institutional imperative?

We do not make a world of our own, but fall into institutions already made, and have to accommodate ourselves to them to be useful at all.

I'm an unelected adviser. I can't insist on my way.

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

My father would have been spectacularly ill-suited to working for an institution of any kind, and I suspect that, to a lesser degree, that's true of me, too.

I did two years at art school in criticism and curatorial practice, but I dropped out because I was frustrated that there was this hierarchy where I couldn't do anything or ask questions.

Artists who take on curatorial activities have the advantage of negating the professional hurdles and limitations comprising institutions.