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So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.

Geoff Mulgan

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Geoff Mulgan
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Economist
Writer
Even
Society
Prepared
Contracts
Treadmills
Much
Future
Bigger
Perpetual
Juggling
Time
Hands
Short
Rarely
Crises
Back
Ones
Civil
Organisation
Live
Stand
Mouth
Minor
Look
Probably
Mouths
Minors
Looks
Hand
Picture
Funding
Organisations
Many
Term
Crisis
Chasing
Treadmill

More quotes by Geoff Mulgan

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The City of London has never been known for understanding technology and has never matched Silicon Valley's tradition of knowledgeable investment in technology start-ups, just as the U.K. government has never matched the vast investment made by the U.S. government.
Geoff Mulgan
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Britain is rich in radicalism, and anyone who says that our society has drifted into fatalism and apathy should get out more.
Geoff Mulgan
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All innovation is about letting go, saying goodbye to things to create space for the new.
Geoff Mulgan
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The wrongful arrest of tens of thousands of British Muslims after the September 11 attacks can be explained by the very poor intelligence the police had, and, just possibly, excused by the fact that a terrorist action in Britain linked to British Muslims would have been hugely damaging.
Geoff Mulgan
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I'm not saying [economic] growth is wrong, but throughout the years of growth, many things didn't get better. ... If you look at America, the proportion of Americans with no one to talk to about important things went up from a tenth to a quarter.
Geoff Mulgan
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One of the lessons of history is that even the deepest crises can be moments of opportunity. They bring ideas from the margins into the mainstream.
Geoff Mulgan
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Teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real - all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.
Geoff Mulgan
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With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are.
Geoff Mulgan
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Social innovation thrives on collaboration on doing things with others, rather than just to them or for them: hence the great interest in new ways of using the web to 'crowdsource' ideas, or the many experiments involving users in designing services.
Geoff Mulgan
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In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.
Geoff Mulgan
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Systems governed by only one set of rules are more vulnerable than those with variety.
Geoff Mulgan
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The biggest barrier to dealing with climate change is us: our own attachment to habits that are hard to shift, and our great ability to park or ignore uncomfortable choices.
Geoff Mulgan
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Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.
Geoff Mulgan
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All over the world, social innovation is tackling some of the most pressing problems facing society today - from fair trade, distance learning, hospices, urban farming and waste reduction to restorative justice and zero-carbon housing. But most of these are growing despite, not because of, help from governments.
Geoff Mulgan
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Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.
Geoff Mulgan
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There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people.
Geoff Mulgan
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Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.
Geoff Mulgan
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Spreading an idea is hard work.
Geoff Mulgan
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Democracy isn't solely about polite conversations in parliaments. It needs to be continually refreshed with raw passions, anger and ideals.
Geoff Mulgan
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Over 5,000 years, states have made surprisingly consistent claims about their duties. They have promised to protect people from threats promote their welfare deliver justice and also, perhaps less obviously, uphold truth - originally truths about the cosmos, and more recently truths drawn from reason and knowledge.
Geoff Mulgan