Challenging Status Quo Quotes

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status ~ Laurence J. Peter

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

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

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

Some people are busy working on their pose instead of their purpose. ~ Saji Ijiyemi

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

'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

There is always a solution to every challenging situation. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I'm a harsh critic of the status quo. ~ Andrew Cuomo

I think black Americans expect too much from individual black Americans in terms of changing the status quo. ~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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

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

I prayed that our growth would be as strong and determined as the seeds of coconut palms, boldly reaching skyward toward the sun diligently boring deeper into the earth to secure a firm foundation for the beautiful, durable, fruit-bearing trees they would become. For me, Mhonda was the place to continue the growth of the still young but strong roots of my tree planted in Kifungilo. This was my life now, the life I'd prayed for, the life that would provide me with an education and would open doors. I wanted this life very much. I told my wavering spirit to bear with me because, just like the coconut palm, I would sway and bend and bruise, but I would survive. I would have to become the tree in the African saying: 'The tree that bends with the wind does not break. ~ Maria Nhambu

Most of the press is in league with government, or with the status quo. ~ Harold Pinter

I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

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

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

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 goal of equality seems to disproportionately burden women, since it's assumed that they have to assume more responsibility, while men can remain the status quo. ~ Amy Richards

The status quo always favors neutrality which in truth is never neutral at all but supports those who stand against change. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

Challenge is the opportunity for greatness. People do their best when there is an opportunity to change how things currently stand. Maintaining the status quo facilitates mediocrity. Those who embrace this practice do not wish to rest on their laurels. They motivate others to exceed their limits and look for innovative ways to improve the organization. ~ James M. Kouzes

But he did not say a thing. Of late, almost as if he had been brought into line with the way people now spoke of the Sikhs, he had come to dislike the sound of his dissenting voice. It made him feel like a bore and an activist; and, like many people who try to fight an emerging status quo, no matter how ugly it is, he felt himself subdued, not by arguments, but by its casual tyranny. It is easier to fight the knowing bigot than it is to fight prejudice in the mouth of a child or the throwaway remark of a society lady. ~ Aatish Taseer

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

Sometimes, proceeding in the dark and aiming an arrow at the elusive, mythical dragon trumps all the rational arguments for not proceeding. Sometimes, the stakes are so high and the status quo is so unacceptable that taking aim in any direction is better than not shooting at all. ~ Rebecca J. Anderson

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

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. ~ Francis Chan

Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, "Let's do things differently." The majority didn't wake up and say, "Oh, let's just free the slaves." Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time had a better idea and articulated another way. That's simply how evolution works; it's the mutation. The member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they're better adapted for survival. ~ Marianne Williamson

The spiritual leader will not procrastinate when faced with a decision, nor vacillate after making it. A sincere but faulty decision is better than weak-willed "trial balloons" or indecisive overtures. To postpone decision is really to decide for the status quo. In most decisions the key element is not so much knowing what to do but in living with the results. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

When your ideas shatter established thought, expect blowback. ~ Tim Fargo

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

I have news for the forces of greed and the defenders of the status quo: your time has come - and gone. It's time for change in America. ~ William J. Clinton

That was exactly why people didn't want to give us any kind of life, because we were threatening their status quo, and they just didn't want to have room for girls playing rock 'n' roll. It bothered them. First, people just tried to get around it by saying, "Oh, wow, isn't that cute? Girls playing rock 'n' roll!," and when we said, "Yeah, right, this isn't a phase; it's what we want to do with our lives," it became, "Oh! You must be a bunch of sluts. You dykes, you whores." That's what it became. Then it became a name-calling contest. ~ Joan Jett

We know that those who challenge the status quo and do so with both conviction and charisma are at risk of being killed. ~ Robin R. Meyers

Smart technologies are not just disruptive; they can also preserve the status quo. Revolutionary in theory, they are often reactionary in practice. ~ Evgeny Morozov

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

Expect the best; convert problems into opportunities; be dissatisfied with the status quo; focus on where you want to go, instead of where you're coming from; and most importantly, decide to be happy, knowing it's an attitude, a habit gained from daily practice, and not a result or payoff. ~ Denis Waitley

Online transactions, once relegated to leaps of faith, have evolved into our status quo. We no longer ask ourselves whether or not it's wise to buy online. Instead, we ask whether or not it's wise to deal with a particular person, service provider, or business. ~ Leah Busque

Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun. ~ Herbert Marcuse

It is our job to ruin the perfection of the empty page. It is our job to disrupt the status quo: because that's what storytelling us. Taking a straight line and bending it, breaking it, shaping it into something far stranger and far greater. ~ Chuck Wendig

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

I need not adapt in certain ways. I am in fact but a visitor to this world, an ephemeral gasp within its long, tired history, and, before anything else, a follower of Christ. By this alone I have the power not to shuffle away from the Faith, the power to break loose from these marching-shackles of ongoing cultural and political pretense. ~ Criss Jami

The status quo is working. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

My course is a survey of how readings of the same constant text have varied over the centuries, from the formation of the canon to our present time, dependent on context and subtext. A community in exile will read differently than a community in apparent full possession of all it surveys, with those who have nothing welcoming the promised overturning of the standing order, and those who have much of this world's goods not longing for the end of the age. Depending, then, upon how one reads and interprets, either the Bible is a textbook for the status quo, of quiescent pieties and promises, or it is a recipe for social change and transformation. There are churches dedicated to each point of view, each claiming its share of the good news; but what is good news for some is often bad news for somebody else. ~ Peter J. Gomes

Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters. ~ Seth Godin

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. ~ Viola Davis

For guardians of the status quo, there is nothing genuinely or fundamentally wrong with the prevailing order and its dominant institutions, which are viewed as just. Therefore, anyone claiming otherwise - especially someone sufficiently motivated by that belief to take radical action - must, by definition, be emotionally unstable and psychologically disabled. Put ~ Glenn Greenwald

We're allowed to have the Great Mother in our spiritual paradigm if she is docile and tame like Mary, or as the Goddess that saves women in childbirth or men from bombs and typhoons. But would patriarchy have us reclaim the full meaning of the Queen Mother of Compassion, or any Goddess, if it meant embodying her might bring our world into balance and emulating her caused women to no longer serve the status quo? I think looking more deeply at Goddesses like Kwan Yin/Kannon might make the patriarchy very nervous. ~ Karen Tate

We lessen the sin of the world by joining the Lamb of God in bearing sin and pardoning sinners. But as the church as become a powerful institution, a consort with kings and queens, a confidante of presidents and prime ministers, our dispensing of grace has become distorted. We show grace to the institutions of systematic sin while condemning the individual sinner. It should be the other way around. It was never the "rank and file" sinners who gnashed their teeth at Jesus, but those for whom the present arrangement of systematic sin was advantageous. Jesus condemned the systematic sin that preserved the status quo for the Herodians and the Sadducees, but showed compassion to publicans and prostitutes. This is grace. But the church, courting the favor of the powerful, has forgotten this kind of grace. We coddle the mighty whose ire we fear and condemn the sin of the weak who pose no threat. We enthusiastically endorse the systems of greed that run Wall Street while condemning personal greed in the life of the individual working for the minimum wage. We will gladly preach a sermon against the sin of personal greed, but we dare not offer a prophetic critique of the golden calf of unfettered capitalism. Jesus and Saint Francis and Dorothy Day did the opposite. They shamed the principalities and powers, but offered pardon to the people. This is the grace of God the church is to embody. ~ Brian Zahnd