The Status Quo Quotes

#1. There is something in the American character, traditionally, that yearns to see the status quo kicked in the ass.

Alec Cizak

#2. The rapid rise of the People's Republic of China as a military and economic power is challenging the status quo.

Dan Quayle

#3. I love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They're always misunderstood, but they're the ones who are standing up for human rights.

Richard Hatch

#4. Questioning the status quo can result in banishment, imprisonment, ridicule or being burned at the stake, depending on your era, your locale, and the sacred cows you wish to butcher.

Gene Spafford

#5. If we do not have a vision before us of where we are headed, we will assume that the status quo is normal, and that we and our cultures and our societies are "only human," without ever realizing that we have never seen normal humanity, in our lives.

Russell D. Moore

#6. As a teenager I was very clear that I wasn't in the church just to toe the line, but I saw there was a capacity within Christianity and the bible not to fall into line but to question the status quo, that's what kept me in the church. I was listening to the sort of music that did that questioning.

Alan Green

#7. In the town of Bethlehem many years ago, a man got religion and he changed the status quo.

Phil Ochs

#8. You can provide the conditions for the motivation of others and the leadership to help them find a way but they must have the intrinsic spark, the desire, to move, to overcome the inertia of the status quo and change things.

Graham Speechley

#9. Leaders are the human catalyst that overcomes our desire for the status quo.

Scott Hammerle

#10. 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

#11. 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.

Jackie Haze

#12. My topics are timely. When an event is happening is when I want to be there ... I think it is our duty to challenge the status quo.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

#13. There are still some pieces that aren't being used, like the white-space bands between TV channels. With digital broadcasting, those buffers aren't needed anymore. The wireless telcos want to lease them, while the TV industry wants to maintain the status quo. Either decision would be a mistake.

Ram Shriram

#14. Given the way some fought for the status quo when I authored the new Ethics Code and created the city's first Ethics Commission, we are going to need your strong support to get an even tougher Ethics Code passed this year.

Laura Miller

#15. The eurozone status quo is neither tolerable nor stable. Mainstream economists would call it an inferior equilibrium; I call it a nightmare - one that is inflicting tremendous pain and suffering that could be easily avoided if the misconceptions and taboos that sustain it were dispelled.

George Soros

#16. To be neutral in a situation of injustice is to have chosen sides already. It is to support the status quo.

Desmond Tutu

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. Instead of challenging the status quo and trusting in your own abilities, they would rather you trust in government.

Eric Bolling

#20. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much.

Walter Isaacson

#21. We have to create the ability to police our own communities instead of leaving it in the hands of a system that has never understood us, tried to marginalize and politically assassinate all of our leaders whenever they came to challenge the status quo.

Immortal Technique

#22. You are a Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in, so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo, and keep saying that a new world is yet to come.

Henri Nouwen

#23. The concept of "girl-on-girl crime" is perplexing to me, and it happens in many ways. There are those, who refuse to identify with women as a group, preferring the shade of the mythologized men, who want to keep up the status quo.

Kate Zambreno

#24. We emphasize that we believe in change because we were born of it, we have lived by it, we prospered and grew great by it. So the status quo has never been our god, and we ask no one else to bow down before it.

Carl T. Rowan

#25. The status quo sucks.

George Carlin

#26. The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo.

Jack Kemp

#27. I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Rita Dove

#28. 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

#29. Even the greatest idea can become meaningless in the rush to judgement. To gauge an idea as feasible we must cut our ties to the status quo and find the balance between constructive criticism and judgment. Within that balance we will uncover crucial input for making our ideas a reality.

Shigeo Shingo

#30. If you want to be a songwriter and place a song with a popular artist, then it's OK to follow the trends. This is mainly because many labels are afraid to take big risks on something that sounds too different than the status quo.

Wendy Starland

#31. Who can sit back as our towns and cities are torn apart by violence and be content with the status quo?

Martin O'Malley

#32. Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo.

Peter M. Senge

#33. Education is the means to end, not the end itself. Education should not become another status quo, or silo, or the end.

Pearl Zhu

#34. NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries of the corporate world.

Arundhati Roy

#35. It is a foolish man who believes that the status quo can be maintained indefinitely.

Charley Reese

#36. You need strong leadership to effectuate change, and the easiest way is to keep everything status quo. And sometimes changes are necessary. If not, you build up too much potential energy.

Ronnie Chan

#37. Most ideas never happen. It's an uphill battle against the status quo and our own tendencies.

Scott Belsky

#38. Until it's understood to involve justice for those in poverty, a future for generations yet unborn, and a commitment to the rest of creation, it's unlikely we'll be able to overcome the status quo.

Bill McKibben

#39. All of us
men and women alike
have to understand and acknowledge how stereotypes and biases cloud our beliefs and perpetuate the status quo.

Sheryl Sandberg

#40. The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe

Walter Benjamin

#41. Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector.

David Rockefeller

#42. Our feeling is that the status quo often gets a boost and this is the new status quo.

Nigel Farage

#43. In order to discover truth it is necessary to coldly dissect and examine all of our prejudices and inherent biases to ensure we receive unbiased answers. This takes effort. It is always easier to simply accept the ideas presented to us than to question the status quo.

Stephen McAndrew

#44. 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

#45. The left-right political dichotomy serves liberalism by not challenging it. Democracy sustains the status quo by offering the illusion of choice with no choice. Genuine opposition can only emerge if there is an alternative story with which to counter the current mythos.

John Dunn

#46. As your care recipient's advocate, be involved, don't accept the status quo, and don't be afraid to voice your concerns.

Nancy L. Kriseman

#47. If you can't change the status quo, make the status quo, change.

Royce White

#48. Dr. Lister, who treated the wounded Pres. Garfield, had been so stung by the medical establishment's reaction to his embrace of African-American doctors that he, in response, refused to do part from the status quo enough to considering using antiseptic techniques.

Candice Millard

#49. Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and legalisms and inaction until it is too late

John Buchanan

#50. Women's potential to disrupt patriarchy and make men vulnerable is why it's so easy for women to make men feel foolish or emasculated through the mildest humor that focuses on maleness and hints at women's power to stop going along with the status quo.

Allan G. Johnson

#51. Professional opinion is skeptical about anything that doesn't fit in with the version of reality it has been programmed to believe in. The skepticism comes from a lack of understanding and the need to defend the status quo and not from actual knowledge of the subject.

David Icke

#52. 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

#53. You don't have to settle for the status quo, for being good enough, for getting by, for working all night.

Seth Godin

#54. Myself, I've always been organized in waves. For months on end, slowly descending into disorder, I drift with the status quo. Then I wake up one morning with a sudden compulsion to color-code my socks or stack them vertically.

Diane Ackerman

#55. Stay More' is synonymous with 'Status Quo' in fact, there are people who believe, or who like to believe, that the name of the town was intended as an entreaty, beseeching the past to remain present.

Donald Harington

#56. 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

#57. philosophers of difference are, in fact, hyperethical and radical political thinkers, concerned with how movements that seek to address marginalization need to become even more ethical, even more radical in their desire to change the status quo in view of justice.

Matthew Calarco

#58. 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

#59. Rich, famous, insider journalists do not want to subvert the status quo that so lavishly rewards them. Like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system that vests them with their privileges and contemptuous of anyone who challenges that system.

Glenn Greenwald

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

Seth Godin

#61. Criticism is like politics: if you don't make your own you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you.

Annie Finch

#62. People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

Max Eastman

#63. Health care is much the same - the status quo is, by all measures, failing far too many people - and we must not shrink from the challenge.

Michael Bennet

#64. Innovation often originates outside existing organizations, in part because successful organizations acquire a commitment to the status quo and a resistance to ideas that might change it.

Guy Kawasaki

#65. Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.

Michael Eric Dyson

#66. '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

#67. 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

#68. Either you defend the status quo, or you invent the future.

Seth Godin

#69. We can no longer continue with a status quo energy policy. We must create sustainable clean energy jobs and leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in better shape than we found it.

Jeff Merkley

#70. Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status

Laurence J. Peter

#71. Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

Sarah Palin

#72. I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.

Tom Green

#73. The journey to significance starts with the mere willingness to surrender the status quo and take the first step of faith into the adventure.

Neil Cole

#74. At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.

E.J. Dionne Jr.

#75. Major political parties have a role, but they are incapable of initiating fundamental change because they are fundamentally tied to the status quo. They are the status quo.

Marianne Williamson

#76. States are like people. They do not question the awful status quo until some dramatic event overturns the conventional and lax way of thinking.

Victor Davis Hanson

#77. There's nothing more fundamentally disruptive to the status quo than a new reality.

Umair Haque

#78. In the 1999 resolution regarding Taiwan's future passed by the Democratic Progressive Party, it is stated very clearly that any change to the status quo of Taiwan must be decided by the people of Taiwan through referenda.

Chen Shui-bian

#79. 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

#80. We will work toward maintaining the status quo for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait in order to bring the greatest benefits and well-being to the Taiwanese people.

Tsai Ing-wen

#81. I've never been very cookie cutter. If I choose something different from the status quo, it's my responsibility and my choice to live my life that way.

Sara Ramirez

#82. Loss aversion is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quo

Daniel Kahneman

#83. This isn't a game. We don't want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you've spent most of your time here being mediocre.

Richelle Mead

#84. I've said it since the day he made the sacrifice to hit the campaign trail: Voters crave the anti-status-quo politician. Everything about Donald Trump's campaign, it's avant-garde. He is crushing it in the polls.

Sarah Palin

#85. The worst that could happen wasn't crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a tolerable status quo.

Timothy Ferriss

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

Jacqueline Novogratz

#87. When you begin the process of unhooking from the outer world, you can find literally hundreds of places where you have given your power away and drained your life force while guaranteeing the status quo.

Debbie Ford

#88. I'm not a gamer. But I am very aware of the escapism of drugs. In my mind those kind of do the same thing. They dull us to the aches and pains of our status quo.

Joshua Mohr

#89. As an independent source of authority and knowledge, science has always had the capacity to challenge ruling powers' ability to control people by controlling their beliefs. Indeed, it has the power to challenge anyone who wishes to preserve, protect, or defend the status quo.

Naomi Oreskes

#90. 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

#91. Entrepreneurs are misfits to the core. They forge ahead, making their own path and always, always, question the status quo.

Maximillian Degenerez

#92. I am concerned that many young people in the Hemisphere seem to envision the United States as a nation intoxicated by power, addicted to warfare, controlled by a military-industrial complex, and determined to preserve the status quo, that we are against rapid economic and social growth.

Luis A. Ferre

#93. Tonight we send a message to our party that here in Illinois, there will be a new generation of Republican leaders and we will fight to provide a better tomorrow for future generations. We've made clear the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Adam Kinzinger

#94. 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

#95. If you're not upsetting anyone, you're not changing the status quo.

Seth Godin

#96. Like the early Christians, we must move into a sometime hostile world armed with the revolutionary gospel of Jesus Christ. With this powerful gospel we shall boldly challenge the status quo.

Martin Luther

#97. ... superb presentations - start by establishing "what is: here's the status quo." Then, they "compare that to what could be," making "that gap as big as possible" - Quoting Nancy Duarte

Adam M. Grant

#98. 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

#99. The status quo is working.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

#100. Tough topics are only tough for those who don't want to approach conversation, who don't like problematizing the status quo and nuancing the narrative.

Monica O Montgomery