“For most of history, war has been a more or less functional institution, providing benefits for those societies that were good at it, although the cost in money, in lives, and in suffering was always significant. Only in the past century have large numbers of people begun to question the basic assumption of civilized societies that war is inevitable and often useful.” PeopleHas BeensWarPastSufferingMoneyNumbersCenturyCostBenefitsInstitutionsSignificantInevitableAssumptionCivilizedProvidingLarge NumbersCivilized Society Author:Gwynne Dyer
“The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. . . . Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society.” PeopleMenHumansChildrenHas BeensStillsEnoughAgeTogetherProcessPowerfulResponsibilityFamilyProduceMen And WomenUniversalBasesInstitutionsExpectedAccessPartnersTiesOutcomesHistorianSelectionRaising ChildrenFormationKinshipLiving TogetherAnthropologists Author:James Q. Wilson
“It is interesting, that termites don't build things, and the great builders of our nation almost to a man have been Christians, because Christians have the desire to build something. He is motivated by love of man and God, so he builds. The people who have come into (our) institutions (today) are primarily termites. They are into destroying institutions that have been built by Christians, whether it is universities, governments, our own traditions, that we have.... The termites are in charge now, and that is not the way it ought to be, and the time has arrived for a godly fumigation.” PeopleMenWayHas BeensGovernmentTodayChristianDesireNationsInterestingOughtBuiltTraditionInstitutionsUniversityMotivatedDestroyingGodlyBuilder Author:Pat Robertson
“Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.” PeopleShouldHas BeensIdeasWholeGovernmentWantedPoliticalCareersRiskPoliticianShould HaveInstitutionsFinancialAbsurdFrankSenatorsShould Have BeenDefaultCongressmanFinancial InstitutionsAssessing Author:Thomas Sowell
“The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.” WantGivingHumansHas BeensIdeasValuesPassionEnergyHistoryHuman NatureObjectsLettersInstitutionsPropertyActiveConsentRoman EmpireValue Of Money Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.” PeopleThinkingWayHas BeensAmericaChallengesInfluenceInstitutionsAmerican LifeInvigoratingUnorthodox Author:William O. Douglas
“Men have been adjudicating on what women are, and how they should behave, for millennia through the institutions of social control such as religion, the medical profession, psychoanalysis, the sex industry. Feminists have fought to remove the definition of what a woman is from these masculine institutions and develop their own understandings.” MenShouldHas BeensSocialSexUnderstandingIndustryInstitutionsDefinitionsFeministProfessionMedicalBehaveRemoveMasculinePsychoanalysisMedical ProfessionSocial Control Author:Sheila Jeffreys