Status Quo Quotes

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

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.
- King Abdullah Ii

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

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

Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
- Ronald Reagan

I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?
- Sheldon Adelson

remember when God has answered you, it no longer matters who has been against you but for Him to answer you and change your story, you have to make up your mind to disobey the wrong order, change the status quo and BE DIFFERENT!
- Jaachynma N E Agu

You can change any status quo, stand out, walk by faith and not by sight and things will definitely go well with you.
- Jaachynma N E Agu

I'm pleased to be a part of a 'new breed' of models who perhaps don't exactly fit the status quo.
- Devon Aoki

I think it's important that there is a change, especially in fashion. I'm pleased to be part of a 'new breed' of models who perhaps don't exactly fit the status quo.
- Devon Aoki

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

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

Listen, I, I did vote - I did cast a vote for health care, and I also said that I thought the process was horrible. The status quo before we passed health care was also horrible.
- Michael Bennett

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
- Warren G Bennis

We preserve the status quo, preserve existing systems.
- Julie Bishop

Grandfather's been dead all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor. 'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.
- Ray Bradbury

Rwanda was considered a second-class operation; because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they'd accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.
- Boutros Boutrosghali

There are also just as many, if not more, women who are anxious to hold down the status quo.
- Susie Bright

Successful people are inspired people; they are unwilling to accept the status quo.
- Asa Don Brown

I would say any behavior that is not the status quo is interpreted as insanity, when, in fact, it might actually be enlightenment. Insanity is sorta in the eye of the beholder.
- Chuck Palahniuk

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

The status quo sucks.
- George Carlin

I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It's still my symbol of rebellion -- against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others' ideas.
- Johnny Cash

...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

Essentially and most simply put, plot is what the characters do to deal with the situation they are in. It is a logical sequence of events that grow from an initial incident that alters the status quo of the characters.
- Elizabeth George

there are lots of would-be censors out there, and although they may have different agendas, they all want basically the same thing: for you to see the world they see...or to at least shut up about what you do see that's different. they are agents of the status quo. not necessarily bad guys, but dangerous guys if you happen to believe in intellectual freedom.
- Stephen King

The status quo and the media is doing everything it can to fry children's brains and make them grow up maladjusted.
- Julie Christie

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

Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues
- Ted Dekker

Most of us are not real eager to grow, myself included. We try to be happy by staying in the status quo. But if we're not willing to be honest with ourselves about what we feel, we don't evolve.
- Olympia Dukakis

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

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.
- Martin Luther King Jr

Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.
- Jane Elliot

Christians were never meant to be normal. We've always been holy troublemakers, we've always been creators of uncertainty, agents of dimension that's incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way that God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of this world.
- Jacques Ellul

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.
- Rainer W Fassbinder

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

a revolutionary in every bedroom cannot fail to shake up the status quo. And if it is your wife that is revolting, you can't just split to the suburbs. Feminism, when it truly achieves it's goals, will crack through the most basic structures of our society.
- Shulamith Firestone

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

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn.
- Barack Obama

I do like things that are not necessarily a reflection of what is considered the right thing by this culture. Somehow, promoting that status quo I find uninteresting.
- Crispin Glover

We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
- Seth Godin

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

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

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

The status quo is simply unacceptable.
- Brad Henry

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

They tend to be civil servants, often diplomats drawn from the Foreign Office, who may be very pleasant, intelligent people, but once they get inside the Palace they're riveted to the status quo and they lose track of public opinion in the real world.
- Anthony Holden

Given the way universities work to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo, the way knowledge is offered as commodity, Women's Studies can easily become the place where revolutionary feminist thought and feminist activism are submerged or made secondary to the goals of academic careerism.
- Bell Hooks

If there is dissatisfaction with the status quo, good. If there is ferment, so much the better. If there is restlessness, I am pleased. Then let there be ideas, and hard thought, and hard work. If man feels small, let man make himself bigger.
- Hubert H Humphrey

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

Tonight was a great opportunity to take on the political status quo that has given us trillion dollar deficits and put millions out of work. Our objective was to inject some common sense into the conversation among Republicans at a time when business-as-usual simply won't work.
- Gary Johnson

In Bougainville, the only flower that grows is the Bougainvillea. In Gainesville, the only thing that ever gets lost are gains. In Gainesville they grow the status quo.
- Jarod Kintz

If the status quo came carbonated in a can, I'd shake things up.
- Jarod Kintz

Similarly, the Marquis is presented in this film as someone who would disturb the status quo and therefore must be kept imprisoned.
- Philip Kaufman

Want to change the world? Upset the status quo? This takes more than run-of-the-mill relationships. You need to make people dream the same dream that you do.
- Guy Kawasaki

The Democratic Party is the party of the status quo.
- Jack Kemp

The status quo is the only solution that cannot be vetoed.
- Clark Kerr

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

Whoever has an original thing to say, it is sort of a threat to the status quo.
- Steve Lacy

Nothing in life is unfair. It's just life. To the extent that I had any inner turmoil, I had only myself to blame. I also thought of my two boys and what kind of example I hoped to be. I would always want them to take charge of their own futures and not be paralyzed by the comfort and certainty of the status quo or be cowed by the judgment of those on the outside looking in.
- Rob Lowe

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

My mission is to offend and insult the bourgeois defenders of the status quo, and entertain those who enjoy sex, violence and sick humour in their face and without apology.
- Ian Martin

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

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

Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build.
- Ferdinand Mount

I would write, Dear Diary, Today I convinced myself it's ok to give up. Stick with the status quo, now just isn't the time. But my reasons aren't reasons, they're excuses and the truth is, I'm scared Stefan. I'm scared that if I let myself be happy for one minute, that the my world's going to come crashing down and I don't know if I'll be able to survive that.
- L J Smith

I really think it would be cowardly to pull back and not challenge the status quo, when the status quo may not be the right way for the field to go.
- Mehmet Oz

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

And I have a message for the liberals and the defenders of the status quo: we're just getting started.
- Rick Perry

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

The web: yet another total disorientation that becomes status quo without anyone realizing it.
- Richard Powers

The fact is, I was born an incurable dreamer, which is in and of itself fundamentally rebellious. No status quo for me. Waiting just around the next corner was something better, I was certain of it.
- Marsha Roberts

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

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

I'm excited about seeing a bipartisan plan to reform education in the United States. The only other option is to protect the status quo and I really don't think anybody wants to do that.
- John Rowland

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

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

Hollywood movies are run on fear and they don't want to make bold choices. They, generally, speaking want to keep things status quo. That's not really interesting for me.
- Kyra Sedgwick

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 Shuibian

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

Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.
- Gloria Steinem

There's still time to find him. And people assuming Marc's dead doesn't make him dead. How often
does Marc hold to the status quo?
- Rachel Vincent

There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.
- David Foster Wallace

People I look to: again, Hank Aaron, man you challenged the status quo and the records of the game. Monumental feats in an era where people didn't like that.
- Dave Winfield

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