Institutional resilience Quotes

Looking past the immediate crisis, a more resilient system must be built on stronger and better designed shock absorbers, both in the major institutions and in the infrastructure of the financial system.

The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.

This Constitution was not made for a day, nor is it composed of such flexible materials as to be warped to the purposes of a casually ascendant influence.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine - but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it.

Our institutions, if they do not erode entirely, can survive periods of decadence brought on by our material success, eras when the whole notion of civic militarism seems bothersome, and in which free speech is used to focus on our own imperfections without concern for the ghastly nature of our enemies.

The roof cannot collapse when the value pillars of government and society are sound and strong.

What's true for churches is true for other institutions: the older and more organized they get, the less adaptable they become. That's why the most resilient things in our world - biological life, stock markets, the Internet - are loosely organized.

The only valid political system is one that can handle an imbecile in power without suffering from it

This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.

I've expressed concern about the assaults on our institutions, both from external sources - meaning the Russians - and internal sources. And I think this will be a real test of the resilience of our system and its pillars.

The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies, to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by factious leaders, into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.

That the more authoritarian organizations survive and prevail goes generally unnoticed because people focus on the objectives of organizations, which are many and varied, rather than on their structures, which lend to be similar.

We tend to look at countries in terms of failed states and functioning states, which is rather simplistic.

Governments aren't going to go away; banks aren't going to go away.

The Founding Fathers built our judicial system to withstand the special interest pressures that beset the political branches of government.

The professional permanent staff that lies right beneath them will still be in place, making everything work until the [Donald] Trump appointees start populating the offices on top of them.

The monarchy is thousands of years old and has experienced many things like 'The Crown' in the past. They're always changing and evolving; that's the thing. They have to.

When your institution is under assault, you're feeling like the weight is on it and the history might be flowing away, don't turn inward, go outward.

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader.

I think some people have blind faith in American institutions without knowing a whole lot about them and think they will stand up to Donald Trump and are indestructible. I actually think democracy is not a definable and achievable state. Any country is either becoming more democratic or less democratic. I think the United States hasn't tended to its journey toward democracy in a long time. It's been becoming less democratic, and right now it's in danger of becoming drastically less democratic.

Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.

Let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity.

The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail.