Status Quo Quotes

Geniuses are always marginalized to one degree or another. Someone wholly invested in the status quo is unlikely to disrupt it.

I am already living, but something is telling me with unchallengeable authority: you are not living properly. The numinous authority of form enjoys the prerogative of being able to tell me 'You must'. It is the authority of a different life in this life. This authority touches on a subtle insufficiency within me that is older and freer than sin; it is my innermost not-yet. In my most conscious moment, I am affected by the absolute objection to my status quo: my change is the one thing that is necessary. If you do indeed subsequently change your life, what you are doing is no different from what you desire with your whole will as soon as you feel how a vertical tension that is valid for you unhinges your life.

Peter Sloterdijk

When your ideas shatter established thought, expect blowback.

Tim Fargo

The existence of any method, standard, custom or practice is no reason for its continuance when a better is offered.

Theodore Roosevelt

There is no gainsaying the fact that this suggested program will strike most people as impossibly “radical” and “unrealistic”; any suggestion for changing the status quo, no matter how slight, can always be considered by someone as too radical, so that the only thoroughgoing escape from the charge of impracticality is never to advocate any change whatever in existing conditions. But to take this approach is to abandon human reason, and to drift in animal- or plant-like manner with the tide of events.

Murray N. Rothbard

...there is still a need for those of us nestled deep within the Christian bubble to look beyond the status quo and critically assess the degree to which we are really living biblically.

The Bible Belt is collapsing. The world of nominal, cultural Christianity that took the American dream and added Jesus to it in order to say, 'you can have everything you ever wanted and Heaven too,' is soon to be gone. Good riddance.

Russell D. Moore

The most dangerous ideas are not those that challenge the status quo. The most dangerous ideas are those so embedded in the status quo, so wrapped in a cloud of inevitability, that we forget they are ideas at all.

Seniority has nothing to do with intellectuality, your individuality wins the majority or minority, simply because you maintained the status quo of your peculiarity.

Michael Bassey Johnson

We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.

Martin Luther King Jr.

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

Prejudice doesn't allow one to accept another at a higher level. However their values or views might be respected.

Rohan B Rebello

The inquisitive nature of youth should carry over into our adult lives. Challenging the status quo and enticing curiosity should be a daily practice of adult life.

It is not only the hostility of others that may prevent us from questioning the status quo. Our will to doubt can be just as powerfully sapped by an internal sense that societal conventions must have a sound basis, even if we are not sure exactly what this may be, because they have been adhered to by a great many people for a long time. It seems implausible that our society could be gravely mistaken in its beliefs, and at the same time, that we would be alone in noticing the fact. We stifle our doubts, and follow the flock, because we cannot conceive of ourselves as pioneers of hitherto unknown difficult truths. It is for help in overcoming our meekness that we can turn to the philosopher.

Alain de Botton

Americans have a tendency to take much of our long-term economic, technological, medical, and social progress for granted, while assuming problems will only get worse. This is unwarranted.

Rachel DiCarlo Currie

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion

Voltaire

If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage as if it were God.

One world leader warned another "the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need.

Awful momentum makes carrying through easier than calling off folly.

Barbara W. Tuchman

The position of a hero is not for the comparision, it is a reference point

Your position may be highly powerful, but you will be a hero only when you are highly respected.

It's my duty as a human being to be pissed off

When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average. And is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.

George Saunders

Established churches not infrequently formed an alliance with the aristocracy , joining arm in arm against change.

Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification.

Harold Edmund Stearns

Venice was a contrast from Los Angeles itself, where you might see a woman with $15,000 tits, a face frozen in place by Botox, wobbling with her $4,000 Gucci bag right past a child with a sunken belly and exposed ribs encaging a heart too weak to scream.

Excellence is to keep beating your own standards every day. If you don't have a standard for yourself, you have no records to beat; and if you don't have any record to beat, you can't excel. What is your current standard?

Israelmore Ayivor

Break away from the box confining you. Positive dreamers do not follow the status quo. They keep raising the standard of the bar higher and higher. Raise the bar.

Israelmore Ayivor

Make a change of your steps when necessary. “Status quo” is the court room where change is kept on trial for long, delaying the verdict. Make a change and achieve your dreams. Rule your case with victory.

Israelmore Ayivor

We are all bounded with each other on the basis of our beliefs and values; when we question those values, we are certainly left alone, away from our families, friends and the dear one. And that is a cost benefit analysis we all make and we keep satisfying ourselves with the status quo of situations.

It is easy, and therefore uninspiring, to love within the norms of acceptance and society. Other than ones own heart, there is no great risk involved; it's all very status quo. The same is tired, but what's outside-the-norm is captivating and gets under people’s skin, pushing their buttons, making them think and revealing their depth as a person, or their lack thereof. It's love against obstacles that inspires the most – a love that faces and ultimately endures through challenges, hardship and ridicule that is courageous and triumphant.

Donna Lynn Hope

What people resist is not change per se, but loss.

Ronald A. Heifetz

The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo.

Bob Iger

You know that you’re truly successful when you can afford to fail.

Abilene possessed greater vision, perhaps because it possessed little else.

All genuinely creative ideas are initially met with rejection, since they necessarily threaten the status quo. An enthusiastic reception for a new idea is a sure sign that it is not original.

Life expects us to challenge the status-quo YET it holds us responsible for ONLY what we can ordinarily do. Life doesn't ask us for too much; it says "to do more, expand your lens". Expand your skills, expand your tools, expand your mind. To do more, be more!

She's no longer afraid to die. What she's afraid of is living, accepting the status quo.

The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.

Moreover, we were to each other aspects of a dream unrealized. I emblemized the excitement of freedom, a life untethered by the confines of constructs. She illustrated a sense of belonging, of ongoing laughter in the face of those constructs, a true lifeline within the walking dead. We were standing in different places, yet the same, seeing within each other a sense of truth within the lies, a radiant light that illuminated the dark.

Often I didn’t think I was cut out for the way the world is, being born into a common culture and system I would never choose for myself.

I felt that the magical people must be in the hidden back roads and dusty cubby holes of life; on highways, in hostels, and in shabby, smoky cafes. These enchanting people are in trees, around fires and under hand-knit hats and street lamps reflecting gold on rain soaked pavement. They dance while others dangle; they vibrantly sing the songs that get jumbled and stuck in the subconscious of others who only wish to catch tune. They are the rare ones whose uncommon experiences touch your heart through just a wink of their eye, the stories stitched in the holes of their shoes, invoking a longing for the unknown, taking others to a place of missing what they've never even had -- they do not settle, they do not compromise.

Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.

When a woman reads a romance novel, she is putting her own pleasure first. That small act of rebellion is perceived as a threat to the status quo. It’s also why this eternally popular and profitable genre has been scorned, ridiculed and dismissed.

I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen

If I always stuck up for what I had, I would have missed the most amazing things I have today. What are you fighting for that you need to let go? Release the magic within. The magic of what could be.

Tony Curl

The breath of life of the Senate is, of course, continuity,

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.

There is this common notion that people are shallow and ignorant until they go out and see the world. I, on the other hand, went out and in comparison realized I was in pretty good standing.

Sometimes people think you’re smart if you question the status quo, if nothing else.

Leaders don’t fall in love with mediocrity. The status quo isn’t their desire to maintain but to improve.

Israelmore Ayivor

Now even reformers needed political machines.

An anti-politician is hardly an anti-politician once he starts winning and works to close the deal by working to sew up the Establishment.

Rhetorical question: Did you get to where you are by accepting the status quo?I didn't.

If you are not going to divorce the status quo, you will give birth to mediocrity.

Israelmore Ayivor

It is as simple as that. Birds fly because they have wings and so when you can’t grow the wings, you can’t be called a bird. Leaders make impacts because they create new ideas and so if you can’t think of any new innovative ideas, you can’t be a leader.

Israelmore Ayivor

Until you fall in love with positive change, becoming passionate about improving the status quo, you won’t become a leader.

Israelmore Ayivor

Never be complacent about the current steps; don't agree and follow the status quo. Be determined that you are making an indelible impact with great change. Now, dress up and go to make it happen!

Israelmore Ayivor

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

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