Top 150 Status Quo Quotes

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.
Abdullah II of Jordan
Corporations often partner with government after natural disasters, as many companies did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As a rule, however, long-term civic/corporate partnerships are still rare .But this need not remain the status quo, as many opportunities are available for such partnerships.
Simon Mainwaring
Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.
Jane Elliot
Growing up in New York with artist parents – a very liberal environment, where we were always encouraged to challenge the status quo – I think for a long time I confused jingoism with patriotism. And that is a mistake.
Claire Danes
I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Anytime that someone defies the status quo and defies oppression, it feels like a step in the right direction.
Nina Jacobson
In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo.
Tony Campolo
The status quo tough-on-crime policies of the '90s and

The status quo tough-on-crime policies of the ’90s and 2000s are not working and are not popular. And it provides me with hope about the possibilities for San Francisco and this whole country in terms of moving away from our dependence on prisons and jails to solve social problems.
Chesa Boudin
Writers transform: they throw a hand grenade into the notion of reality that people carry around in their heads. That’s very dangerous, very destructive, but not to do it means you are satisfied with the status quo – and that’s a kind of danger as well, because a kind of violence is already being perpetuated.
John Edgar Wideman
I think when you see that the status quo creates pain and anguish and suffering, what I am most afraid of is that things will stay the same.
Bryan Stevenson
I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo. The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew, or anyone from a group that the country is ‘not ready’ to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.
Shirley Chisholm
Many have built their careers buttressing the status quo, reinforcing what they’ve already accomplished, and resisting the radical thinking that can topple their legacy – not exactly the attitude you want when trying to drive innovation forward.
Peter Diamandis
Being quiet is comfortable. Keeping things the way they’ve been is comfortable. And all comfort has done is maintain the status quo.
Luvvie Ajayi
Entrepreneurs are misfits to the core. They forge ahead, making their own path and always, always, question the status quo.
Maximillian Degenerez
As newly created P2P businesses disrupt the status quo and compete with established companies, they face the difficulty of fitting a square peg into a round hole when it comes to existing regulatory regimes that don’t contemplate their business models.
Sam Graves
The avoidance of explicit ethical judgments leads political scientists to one overriding implicit value judgment – that in favor of the political status quo as it happens to prevail in any given society.
Murray Rothbard
The history of storytelling isn’t one of simply entertaining the masses but of also advising, instructing, challenging the status quo.
Therese Fowler
Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.
Howard Schultz
Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.
Robert Byrne
I refuse to go along with the status quo of more wasteful federal spending, and I refuse to let the Obama Administration continue to force their misguided ideology through regulatory overreach.
Paul Gosar
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 Werner Fassbinder
I’ve never been very cookie cutter. If I choose something different from the status quo, it’s my responsibility and my choice to live my life that way.
Sara Ramirez
Often motivated by a desire to maintain the existing status quo, sloth almost cost the U.S. its auto industry, as it refused for decades to build fuel-efficient cars to compete with Japanese, Korean and European imports.
Simon Mainwaring
You need strong leadership to effectuate change, and the easiest way is to keep everything status quo. And sometimes changes are necessary. If not, you build up too much potential energy.
Ronnie Chan
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 Boutros-Ghali
If you want a president who will upend the status quo in Washington, D.C., and appoint justices of the Supreme Court who will uphold the Constitution, we have but one choice, and that man is ready. This team is ready. Our party is ready and when we elect Donald Trump, the 45th president.
Mike Pence
I am from the class that has, in a sense, benefited from the status quo, but everyone still gets victimized.
Benigno Aquino III
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 love revolutionaries who have the courage to stand up against the status quo. They’re always misunderstood, but they’re the ones who are standing up for human rights.
Richard Hatch
After struggling with homelessness like other areas across the state, we bucked the status quo to make San Diego the only big city in California where homelessness went down, not up.
Kevin Faulconer
My daughter is 15. None of her friends know who the hell Chris Rea is, but they know that song – as soon as it comes on, they start singing it. I’ve played with everyone from Status Quo to Talk Talk, but nothing impresses them as much as the fact that I play on ‘Driving Home for Christmas.’
Chris Rea
I think I’ve learned quite a bit about the battle of the sexes or, at least, how to keep the status quo a little bit more.
Nicholas Gonzalez
The power in Washington, D.C., is centered on the status quo – outdated systems, models, and programs built for a previous century. With more silicon and less concrete, we can open up those models to return power and independence to every man, woman, and child.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers
There are also just as many, if not more, women who are anxious to hold down the status quo.
Susie Bright
Graham’s legacy is not as a maverick or a trailblazer. It is the legacy of a man who used Jesus as a tool to placate the masses so that the status quo of conservative white America could remain firmly in place.
Anthea Butler
Speaking out and challenging the status quo is seldom cheered at the UN.
Richard Grenell
We need to discuss what our own standards are for games writing that falls outside of journalism, and support experimental formats and routes of production that may be more tailored to them than the status quo, because the public at large seems to still think that the only games writing that exists are reviews and news.
Zoe Quinn
Brexit was not a coup. Far from it. In the eyes of most analysts, it was a clear sign that people are frustrated and fed up with the status quo; this is particularly the case with independent voters.
Fabrizio Moreira
Sometimes, we need an obstacle to challenge us and push

Sometimes, we need an obstacle to challenge us and push us further than we would if things were always status quo. I’d say one example is the market crashing. It’s like, just when we started to get into a rhythm, everything changed! But, it taught us a great deal about how we do business and how we can improve.
John Varvatos
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
If I know I’m going to be in a little different system, I’m 39, I can plan for that; we can plan for that. Doing nothing, the status quo, is going to guarantee cuts for current seniors… reforming the system is the only way you shore it up.
Sean Duffy
There’s a lot of evidence that shows that if we push as hard as we need to for net-zero emissions, we’ll find ourselves with cities that are more secure, healthier, and have more economic opportunity – are frankly better cities to live in – than if we settle for the status quo.
Alex Steffen
I like characters and stories that challenge the status quo. Lately, I’m really interested in history because I find that in my public school education, I didn’t learn about women in history. I want to introduce the world to some great stories and incredible heroes.
Jessica Chastain
Part of the power of having startup communities is it continues to challenge the status quo. So for many of these cities that were once very important and powerful that today are struggling, startup communities are a way for them to rejuvenate themselves.
Brad Feld
Punk was originally about creating new, important, energetic music that would hopefully threaten the status quo and the stupidity of the 1970s.
Jello Biafra
I love challenging the status quo.
Sara Ramirez
Texas has waited too long for a governor who knows that quid pro quo shouldn’t be the status quo. It’s time for a governor who believes that you don’t have to buy a place in Texas’ future.
Wendy Davis
No one went to the ballot box to vote for something worse than the status quo.
Konnie Huq
Influential people are never satisfied with the status quo. They’re the ones who constantly ask, ‘What if?’ and ‘Why not?’ They’re not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom, and they don’t disrupt things for the sake of being disruptive; they do it to make things better.
Travis Bradberry