REFORM QUOTES II

quotations about reform

I see dull people as projects ... to be reformed.

BEN ELTON

Two Brothers


Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.

EMMELINE PANKHURST

My Own Story


We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

preface, Misalliance

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

DERRICK A. BELL

Faces at the Bottom of the Well


Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes.

EDGAR WATSON HOWE

Country Town Sayings

Tags: Edgar Watson Howe


The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

OSCAR WILDE

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Tags: Oscar Wilde


If you want a man to succeed in the reform of his affairs which are in a deadlock and mess, you must self-evidently first of all tell him how to reform the instrument with which he has to carry out that reform--the instrument, viz, the man himself.

CONFUCIUS

The Universal Order: Or, Conduct of Life, a Confucian Catechism

Tags: Confucius


That man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.

SENECA

Letters from a Stoic

Tags: Seneca


Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions.

G. K. CHESTERTON

All Is Grist: A Book of Essays

Tags: G. K. Chesterton


Neither fire, sword, nor banishment can retard reform, but it rather hastens it forward.

JACQUES AUGUSTE DE THOU

attributed, Day's Collacon


Sustainable reform is more likely to occur if leaders plot in advance where they want to go, and what steps they need to take -- and in what order -- to get there.

CLAY WESCOTT

"Civil Service Reform in Africa", Civil Service Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean: Proceedings of a Conference


A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with.

WENDELL BERRY

The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays


I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill 'em.

CARL PANZRAM

Panzram: A Journal of Murder


To discard what is unwanted, and to retain what is needed, is what reform means.

PERIYAR E. V. RAMASAMY

Collected Works


Fear not to reform.

CONFUCIUS

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Confucius


Whatever you dislike in another person, take care to reform in yourself.

THOMAS SPRATT

attributed, Day's Collacon


Reform has usually been the work of reason slowly awakening from the lethargy of ignorance, gradually acquiring confidence in her own strength, and ultimately triumphing over the dominion of prejudice and custom.

SAMUEL PARR

Aphorisms, Opinions and Reflections of the late Dr. Parr


All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed.

BRYANT MCGILL

Voice of Reason


They were apt vociferously to demand "reform" as if it were some concrete substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor reformers made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticising; and they delighted in criticising the men who really were doing the things which they said ought to be done, but which they lacked the sinewy power to do. They often upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very politicians to whom they professed to be most hostile. Moreover, if they believed their own interests, individually or as a class, were jeoparded, they were apt to show no higher standards than did the men they usually denounced.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

An Autobiography

Tags: Theodore Roosevelt