Quotes & Sayings About Status Quo

We can walk together to change the status quo. — Ken Wyatt

Times were changing in the world of id. They had finally fired Jason, narrowing the group to Carmack, Romero, Adrian, and Tom. But something else was in the air. The Reagan-Bush era was finally coming to a close and a new spirit rising. It began in Seattle, where a sloppily dressed grunge rock trio called Nirvana ousted Michael Jackson from the top of the pop charts with their album Nevermind. Soon grunge and hip-hop were dominating the world with more brutal and honest views. Id was braced to do for games what those artists had done for music: overthrow the status quo. Games until this point had been ruled by their own equivalent of pop, in the form of Mario and Pac-Man. Unlike music, the software industry had never experienced anything as rebellious as Wolfenstein 3-D. The — David Kushner

Leaders don't fall in love with mediocrity. The status quo isn't their desire to maintain but to improve. — Israelmore Ayivor

I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Wal-Mart. — Sam Walton

When there's a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

You dreamed like all mothers do.
Until he began to speak aloud,
Your boy,
calling for justice in the market place,
Demanding integrity and fair play
in the courts and halls of business.
Declaring the Realm of God
Imminent,
Manifest . . .
Jesus leapt into the swelling crowds
like an axe into wood,
Uncompromising and unrelenting
in his passionate call
for peace and justice.
Jesus, your boy,
causing havoc in public,
critiquing and condemning
the status quo,
breaking rule after rule . . .
And with every speech,
with every act of defiance,
with every call to liberation,
with every amazing deed,
Your dreams of peace and liberation,
Your dreams of a secure old age,
Your dreams of grandchildren--
Evaporated. — Edwina Gateley

I'm here to say there is a choice. If you want to stick to the status quo, pick the Republicans or Democrats, but don't complain. Nobody can do a better job than I can. — Scott Ashjian

Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience. — Alex Steffen

People think about life in terms of changes, not levels. They can be changes from the status quo or changes from what was expected, but whatever form they take, it is changes that make us happy or miserable. — Richard H. Thaler

Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal. — Eric Van Lustbader

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

Faith in God's revelation has nothing to do with an ideology which glorifies the status quo. — Karl Barth

Some say that I should settle down, go slower and not push so hard, so quickly for such transformational change. To them, I say that you misunderstand the size of the problems we face, the strength of the status quo and the urgency of the people's desire for change. — Eliot Spitzer

In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo. — Tony Campolo

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo. — Max Eastman

Once the new power has taken over they have to establish a new status quo just to keep the factories and trains running. — John Lennon

'Hispanic' is English for a person of Latino origin who wants to be accepted by the white status quo. 'Latino' is the word we have always used for ourselves. — Sandra Cisneros

The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach
condemnation without discussion
can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door. — Barack Obama

All of this is happening because there has still been no reckoning post the financial crisis. So governments have fallen, one bloke has been to prison, the banks have gone pretty well back to status quo, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer. And it's fuelling anger. And somehow [Donald] Trump, who represents the worst aspects of capitalism, has persuaded people he can deal with that. — Alastair Campbell

Silence is an argument in favor of the status quo. A refusal to address an inequity is a strategy for maintaining that inequity. — PZ Myers

All to often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be. — John Gardner

Literary censorship should not be necessary within the parameters of the law because it's simply a reflection of prevailing social prejudices!

Writing should challenge and change prevailing ideas - churning the guts and ruffling feathers of friends, family and society. Antagonizing is a product of open writing. Expecting less is resignation and stagnation that slides the art into the status-quo.

Writing needs the wider view that shows the causality of our prevailing social prejudice - and shakes at its foundation.

Writers spare us no less and please leave your praise and oppugn to Christopher Hitchens. — Jack Tar

The attempt to understand reality apart from that action of God in and upon reality means living in anabstraction; it means failing to live in reality and vacillating between the extremes of a servile attitude toward the status quo and a protest in principle against it. Only God's becoming human makes possible an action that is genuinely in accord with reality. The world remains world. But it only does so because God has taken care of it and declared it to be under God's rule. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pessimism doesn't grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities. — Harvey MacKay

He wasn't marrying her. Even if she'd have him, which she certainly wouldn't, he had no intention of leg-shackling himself to such a difficult woman. She's always be racing off to save some new stray lamb, and if she even caught wind of the Scorpion's criminal associations she'd probaby try to save them, as well. She was a dangerous woman, never content with the status quo, and she would drag who ever was fool enough to marry her along for the ride. — Anne Stuart

Law is not as disinterested as our concepts of law pretend; law serves power; law in large measure is a recapitulation of the status quo; it confirms a rigid order designed to insulate the beneficiaries of the status quo from the disturbances of change. The painful truth
one with a long history
is that police are around in large part to guarantee a peaceful disgestion for the rich. — William Sloane Coffin Jr.

The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to It. — Herbert Marcuse

Our thoughts about the future go far toward creating it; our minds and hears are like filaments taht connect today to tomorrow, they are conduits for either the status quo or the emergence of different, hopefully more loving, possibilities. How we think and how we behave determine where we are going — Marianne Williamson

Revolution from above, in some states and cases, is [ ... ] often preferable to the status quo, or to no revolution at all. — Christopher Hitchens

To be heroic may mean nothing more than this then, to stand in the face of the status quo, in the face of an easy collapse into the madness of an increasingly chaotic world and represent another way. — Mike Alsford

How can you test whether something's an assumption? Try this: switch things around, and check how bananas everybody goes. — Annabel Crabb

Status quos are made to be broken. — Ray A. Davis

Texas has waited too long for a governor who knows that quid pro quo shouldn't be the status quo. It's time for a governor who believes that you don't have to buy a place in Texas' future. — Wendy Davis

The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. But when you hit a wall in your personal life, and you screw up, people don't give you a chance to navigate your way through it and tap into what's extraordinary about you. — Viola Davis

There is something in the American character, traditionally, that yearns to see the status quo kicked in the ass. — Alec Cizak

I'll never truly understand what it's like to be anyone but a white man in the United States. For all of my self-imposed distance from the status quo, I'll never be able to get my head around being the product of generations of hardship. The most brutal chattel slavery in human history. I'll never comprehend being penned up in an impoverished reservation on land that was once sovereign domain. I'll never know how it feels to be denied because of the color of your skin or because of where you came from. To have to watch your children suffer the same fate. But I still try to understand - by studying the history that the victors didn't write, and interacting with my fellow human beings. Finding out what their favorite color is. Asking what they daydreamed about as a child. Sharing laughs. Discovering the person. I — Arno Michaelis

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. — Jackie Haze

The attackers are the people with bold, innovative ideas, who are trying to disrupt the status quo, and usher in a better way. We need to think out of the box, and be curious, and be willing to take risks. — Steve Case

Challenge your own status quo - before someone else does. — Ron Kaufman

If you ask why I do what I do - I want to make a difference. I don't just want to maintain the status quo. I want to help people, to work with institutions or create ones when they don't exist. — Eli Broad

Would we as a nation be better off dealing with the truth rather than believing fantasies that prop up the Status Quo and the Fed's dearly beloved measure of the economy, the stock market? How often does accepting illusion help us navigate real life? Short answer: never. — Charles Hugh Smith

I've always been politically minded, you know, and against the status quo. — John Lennon

When we really keep in the forefront of our thoughts that our intention in this life is to recover and be free, then being of service, practicing meditation, and doing what we need to do to get free becomes the only rational decision. This takes discipline, effort, and a deep commitment. It takes a form of rebellion, both inwardly and outwardly, because we not only subvert our own conditioning, we also walk a path that is totally countercultural. The status quo in our world is to be attached to pleasure and to avoid all unpleasant experiences. Our path leads upstream, against the normal human confusions and sufferings. — Noah Levine

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative. — Christopher Hitchens

The rewards system of the traditional workplace keeps us on track, in line with deadlines from the higher-ups. If we adhere to it, the deeply embedded rewards system of our adult lives is likely to keep s employed and secure within the status quo ... However, these tendencies become destructive as soon as we begin to pursue long-term goals or attempt something extraordinary — Scott Belsky

Leaders are fascinated by future. You are a leader if and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with status quo. Because in your head, you can see a better future. The friction between 'what is' and 'what could be' burns you, stirs you up, propels you. This is leadership. — Marcus Buckingham

I cannot see that keeping the status quo intact would help in any way to solve the problems of inequality or suffering in this world. I would go for taking action towards change instead of accepting the inevitable. — Elina Juusola

When the fear of failure triumphs over the repugnance of mediocrity, we must resign ourselves to the status quo. Every change, every opportunity to do something different will send us running to hide beneath a cover of excuses and complacency. Those few courageous souls who delve into the lands where they risk failure, will be soundly ridiculed. They will be condemned not because they dream, but rather for making their dreams real and destroying the illusion that all that can be thought has been thought, all that can be done has been done, and all that can be felt has been felt. In their enthusiastic insolence, they see life filled with infinite possibilities and they know they must chart their own course, even if they must go alone. — D.A. Blankinship

To believe that man's aggressiveness or territoriality is in the nature of the beast is to mistake some men for all men, contemporary society for all possible societies, and, by a remarkable transformation, to justify what is as what needs must be; social repression becomes a response to, rather than a cause of, human violence. Pessimism about man serves to maintain the status quo. It is a luxury for the affluent, a sop to the guilt of the politically inactive, a comfort to those who continue to enjoy the amenities of privilege. — Leon Eisenberg

But while all fear is not laziness, much fear is exactly that. Much of our fear is fear of a change in the status quo, a fear that we might lose what we have if we venture forth from where we are now. In the section on discipline I spoke of the fact — M. Scott Peck

Be more tolerant of the difficult people. They're the creative ones. They're not happy with the status quo. — Terry Leahy

A leader who loves status quo soon becomes a follower. — John C. Maxwell

Never accept or be too comfortable with the status quo, because the companies that get into trouble are historically the ones that aren't able to adapt to change and respond quickly enough. — Tony Hsieh

In spite of warnings, nothing much happens until the status quo becomes more painful than change. — Laurence J. Peter

Stella says the name for the house where she and Ms. Havisham live is Stasis, Greek, or Latin, or Hebrew, or all three to dub the domicile Enough House. In a healthy soul, this might mean contentment. Or, in seeing what we have as Enough, this can mean we are not open to vulnerability, generosity, or dependence on those who might threaten our Stasis. — Charles Dickens

Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo, — Nomi Prins

Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo. — Bill Mauldin

Government breeds more government, and a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself. — George F. Will

The status quo helps liberals. We're going to change the country. — Howard Dean

If one looks at a balancing scale putting "fear of change" on one side and "status quo" on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip. — David W. Earle

The effect of emotional venting is to sustain an unsatisfactory status quo. Most people think the opposite, that complaining is part of an effort to change an unsatisfying situation. Nope. Complaining lets off pressure so that we neither explode with frustration nor feel compelled to take the often risky steps of openly opposing a difficult person or situation. Keeping emotional pressure tolerably low doesn't change problematic circumstances but rather perpetuates them. — Martha N. Beck

Sometimes people think you're smart if you question the status quo, if nothing else. — Craig Ferguson

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

Innovation is deviance which means that the rebellious personality is a natural resource for practical creativity. As an innovator, you need to reject the old to establish a new, better, status quo. And one of the most powerful sources of newness is the rebel or maverick, mind. — Max McKeown

Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo. — Robert Byrne

In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo. — Donna De Varona

Myth, legend, and ritual ... function to maintain a status quo. That makes them singularly bad in coping with change, indeed counterproductive, for change is the enemy of myth. — Elizabeth Janeway

For Leon, who had long grown used to having two wives,one at his side and one in his head, nothing much changed, but Yvonne's soul found peace at last. For her too, the question of whether or not they were destined for one another had now been settled, and it no longer mattered whether they were really passionately or only half-heartedly in love, or whether they only pretended or wrongly believed that they loved one another. All that mattered was the actual status quo. It was as simple as that. — Alex Capus

People are tired of the status quo. You see that in various movements in and out of our [the Republicans]party, but most candidates are offering hollow rhetoric, not specific solutions. — Carly Fiorina

Their devotion had never been put to any serious test, and might not have withstood one; their love for God was based in their satisfaction with the status quo. — Ted Chiang

The highest calling of leadership is to challenge the status quo and unlock the potential of others. We need a leader who will lead the resurgence of this great nation and unlock its potential once again. — Carly Fiorina

It will always be a battle a day between those who want maximum change and those who want to maintain the status quo. — Gerry Adams

One of the basics of a good system of innovation is diversity. In some ways, the stronger the culture (national, institutional, generational, or other), the less likely it is to harbor innovative thinking. Common and deep-seated beliefs, widespread norms, and behavior and performance standards are enemies of new ideas. Any society that prides itself on being harmonious and homogeneous is very unlikely to catalyze idiosyncratic thinking. Suppression of innovation need not be overt. It can be simply a matter of peoples walking around in tacit agreement and full comfort with the status quo. — Nicholas Negroponte

Managers maintain an efficient status quo while leaders attack the status quo to create something new. — Orrin Woodward

Bury my head in the sand and go with the status quo or find myself in the rubble and move on. I'd chosen the latter and that had led me here to him. Heaven help me. — Jordan Silver

This nation was founded by rebels and revolutionaries, and its flags were carried across the battlefields by people who were very, very against the status quo and who questioned and criticized. — Lupe Fiasco

It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho, Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo. — John Collings Squire

Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s. — Jello Biafra

The most potent tool in maintaining the status quo is our belief that change is impossible. — Russell Brand

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

Damned Beaver/Jeremy is the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made
that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day ... Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. — Thomas Pynchon

Even when early innovations start to succeed, it is not uncommon to see growing businesses sabotaged for threatening the status quo. — Jacqueline Novogratz

That was my fear, which is why when I was took over a book, I was always trying to tweak it a little bit so that it looked like I was trying to add something instead of keeping the status quo. — Todd McFarlane

There's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home! — Sinclair Lewis

Being satisfied with the status quo means you are not making progress — Katsuaki Watanabe

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

Reincarnation offers a better justification of evil than anything monotheism can offer, but it does so by blaming the victim and sanctifying the status quo. — Patricia Crone

Change is threatening to the status quo. — David W. Earle

I think the media has become incredibly corrupt. We used to have a profound tradition of investigative journalism in the United States. Some journalists were real heroes, such as Bob Woodward who helped uncover the Watergate scandal. But today he is leading the opposite charge, trying to bring down the careers of people and score easy victories. In other words, those who used to bust the status quo have now become the status quo. — Marianne Williamson

Straight white males: that's the predominant moviegoing category, and the persistence of that is a dismaying maintenance of the status quo. — Wesley Morris

The purpose of all of this (left hemisphere's way of choosing denial or repression over considering an anomaly) is to impose stability on behavior and to prevent vacillation because indecisiveness doesn't serve any purpose. Any decision, so long as it is probably correct, is better than no decision at all. A perpetually fickle general will never win a war. — V.S. Ramachandran

It is the people who innovate that inspire, and innovation is not born of the status quo. — Michele Jennae

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

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally. — Seth Godin

The mind is reluctant to embrace deep change, and will play devious games to maintain the status quo. — Kristin Linklater

The status quo (of development) pre-ordains failure from the very beginning. — Gene Kim

For each project I do, I try to surprise myself, do the unexpected, and change my own status quo. From the One Laptop Per Child, the Herman Miller Sayl, or the latest Movado watch collection, there is always an insecurity about being able to do something important. I think each of those projects makes me feel like we have progressed. — Yves Behar

Constant questioning produces a status quo of change. — Ted Agon

When we are more energized by the practice of blaming than we are by efforts to create transformation, we not only cannot find relief from suffering, we are creating the conditions that help keep us stuck in the status quo — Bell Hooks

The diagnosis is clear, but changing the status quo has proven difficult, because often those who are elected do not govern, and those who do govern are not elected. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas