CHANGE

“I keep thinking about the extraordinary conservatism of the people running the world economy, running the governments of the largest nations of the world. Let’s compare it to ages past: let’s think about the people who fought World War II, let’s think about the ’50s, the giant structures like the United Nations, Bretton Woods, the space program— those people were capable of thinking big. We don’t do that anymore. The instinct of the people now in power is to figure out how to change things as little as possible. The world political culture has turned into this knee-jerk defensive conservatism of trying desperately to maintain things exactly as they are, for as long a period as possible.”
--David Graeber, “anti-leader of Occupy Wall Street” and author of DEBT: THE FIRST 5,000 YEARS in a Boston Review interview

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
--Thomas Jefferson, author of the United States Declaration of Independence and co-author of the United States Constitution