Institution

• “An institution is defined as collective action in control, liberation and expansion of individual action.”

• “Modern institutions are transparently purposive and that we are in the midst of an evolutionary progression toward more efficient forms.”

• “Institutions is a verbal symbol which for want of a better describes a cluster of social usages. It connotes a way of thought or action of some prevalence and permanence, which is embedded in the habits of a group or the customs of a people.”

• “Institutions are human behavior, and they are, therefore, to be explained by the characteristics of that behavior.”

• “Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic, and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights). Throughout history, institutions have been devised by human beings to create order and reduce uncertainty in exchange.”

• “If political institutions do not meet the needs of the people, if the people finally believe that those institutions do not express their own values, then those institutions must be discarded. It is wasteful and inefficient, not to mention unjust, to continue imposing old forms and ways of doing things on a people who no longer view those forms and ways as functional.”

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.