“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status”

“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status” is a one-line saying from educator and business author Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990). Peter credited himself in his book, Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Times (1977), but gave no date for his quotation. Peter has been credited by others for the quotation since about 1973.
 
The saying means that a bureaucracy supports the “status quo”—those who are in power or who are at least perceived to be in power. Immigration may change the political power in an area, but a bureaucracy is slow to react to demographic trends.
 
   
Wikiquote: Laurence J. Peter
Dr. Laurence J. Peter (1919-09-16 – 1990-01-12) was an educator and management theorist best known for having formulated the Peter Principle.
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Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977)
ISBN 0-688-03217-6
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
. p. 83
 
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
status quo noun \-ˈkwō\
Definition of STATUS QUO
: the existing state of affairs
Origin of STATUS QUO
Latin, state in which
First Known Use: 1807
   
Google Books
The Institutional Imperative;
How to understand the United States Government and other bulky objects

By Robert N. Kharasch
New York, NY: Charterhouse Books
1973
Pg. 262:
LAURENCE J. PETER, author of The Peter Principle and The Peter Prescription: “I was fascinated by its disclosure of the internal principles that explain why government bureaucracy perpetuates the status quo, long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”
 
21 November 1976, New York (NY) Times, “Letters”:
His opinion well illustrates the following quotation of Lawrence J. Peter. “Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”
 
Google Books
Peter’s Quotations:
Ideas for Our Times

By Laurence J. Peter
New York, NY: Morrow
1977
Pg. 83:
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.—Laurence J. Peter
 
29 July 1981, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), “Andy Capp” comic strip by Reg Smythe, pg. 2G, col. 3:
‘E DEFENDS THE STATUS QUO LONG PAST THE TIME WHEN THE QUO HAS LOST ITS STATUS.
(Said by a woman about her husband—ed.)
   
1 April 1983, The Oregonian (Portland, OR), “Arbitrary rule punishes high school innocents” by Larry Hilderbrand, pg. C10, col. 5:
Writer Laurence J. Peter once offered to hide-bound bureaucracies an observation the OSAA would do well to heed: “Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”
 
14 December 1983, Frederick (MD) Post, pg. 1 masthead:
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
—Laurences J. Peter