The institution of the throne is an anachronistic, feudal institution perfectly adapted to the use of anachronistic feudal-minded groups.

-Acheson, Dean Gooderham
Opposing US  Ambassador  Joseph Grew's recommendation for the Emperor's retention in postwar  Japan. Quoted in Lee Giovanitti and Fred Freed  The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb (1960).

It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

-Burke, Edmund
  On Conciliation with  America.

She has been beastly to the Bank of England, has demanded that the BBC'set its house in order'and tends to believe the worst of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her handbag.

-Critchley, SirJulian Michael Gordon
  Profile of Margaret Thatcher in The Times, 21  Jun.

Politics are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet peopleavoid the question of the Presidency†the great constitutional feature of this institution being, that directly theacrimonyof the last election is over, the next one begins.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
  American Notes.

Isnot marriageanopenquestion, whenit isalleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institutionwishtoget out; and suchas are out wishtoget in.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
  Representative Men,'Montaigne; or, The Skeptic'.

No major institution in the US has so poor a record of performance over so long a period as the Federal Reserve, yet so high a public reputation.

-Friedman, Milton
  'The Fed Has No Clothes', in The Wall Street Journal,15  Apr.

It's more than a game. It's an institution.

-Hughes,Ted (Edward James)
  Of cricket. Tom Brown's Schooldays, pt.2, ch.7.

Is an institution always a man's shadow shortened in the sun, the lowest common denominator of everybody in it?

-Jarrell, Randall
  Pictures from an Institution, pt.5, ch.9.

Unlike the Laws of Production, those of Distribution are partly of human institution, since the manner in which wealth is distributed in any given society, depends on the statutes or usages therein obtaining.

-Mill,John Stuart
  Principles of Political Economy, with Some Applications to Social Philosophy.

In so far as the familyas an institution turns women into darling littleslaves andmenintotheirchief providers and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactory marriage remains incapable of purely private solution.

-Mills, C(harles) Wright
  The Sociological Imagination, ch.1.

The House of Lords must be the only institution in the world that is kept efficient by the persistent absenteeism of its members.

-Samuel, Herbert Louis, 1st Viscount Samuel
  In American News Review, 5 Feb.