Quotes about Institutions

It is reasonable to expect that leading a divine conspiracy will require journalists, writers, artists, and scholars to carefully, accurately, and courageously expose the follies of our social institutions in government, business, religion, art, economics, engineering, medicine, law, finance, security, and education. This is where our Christian universities play perhaps the central role, if administrating the common flourishing is to occur in any meaningful way.

This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia.

When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.

When a man begins to feel that he is the only one whou can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.

The tone and tendency of liberalism...is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of reform and to make war on the manners and customs of the people under the pretext of progress.

Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this.

Every other institution in society is built on the family. If the family disintegrates, those institutions that depend on strong families will disintegrate as well. Once that happens, there is no law you can pass that will make up for the devastation. There is no program you can institute that will fix what happens to people when a home is shattered. There is no politician you can elect who can bring harmony and social order when the family is decimated.

There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class.

Jesus was Jewish. He went to synagogue "as was his tradition" and celebrated holy days such as Passover. But Jesus also healed on the Sabbath. Jesus points us to a God who is able to work within institutions and order, a God who is too big to be confined. God is constantly coloring outside the lines. Jesus challenges the structures that oppress and exclude, and busts through any traditions that put limitations on love. Love cannot be harnessed.

You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This is the church." At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.

In other words, if you wanted good government, then expertise mattered. You needed public institutions stocked with people whose job it was to pay attention to important stuff so the rest of us citizens didn't have to.

Don't say I hate institutionalised religion - rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I'm saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.