Reform Movements Quotes

• Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Presidential, Political, Reform

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• An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.

  Clara Barton

  Selfish, Evil, Suffering

  Clara Barton (1899). “The Red Cross in peace and war”

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• We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  America, Reform, Movement

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• 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

  Crush, Government, Ideas

  Emmeline Pankhurst (2016). “My Own Story”, p.187, The Floating Press

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• The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.

  Andrew Greeley

  Leadership, Ice, Church

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• The lunatic fringe in all reform movements.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Reform, Movement, Fringe

  'Autobiography' (1913) ch. 7

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• Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Distance, Class

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• Among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Wise, Fashion, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (1899). “The Rough Riders: An Autobiography”, p.461, Library of America

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• Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

  Carl Bernstein

  Political, Reform, Movement

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• Many of the received models of modern architecture and planning owe their ultimate origin to the building code and public health reform movements of the second half of the 19th century.

  Kenneth Frampton

  Reform, Movement, Half

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• If you look at the way all of the new reform movements dedicated to the public interest are living and thriving on the Internet, I do think there is still some considerable hope that the full participation of individuals in that conversation of democracy can once again restore the integrity of the way our democracy works.

  Al Gore

  Integrity, Thinking, Democracy

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air.... It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it.... Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

  Salman Rushdie

  Sibling, Moving, Air

  "Everybody needs to get thicker skins" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. July 10, 2008.

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• I don't think polarization is some kind of grand distraction. It's real. People have different commitments, believe in different things and principles, different visions of the good life ... but there is also a degree to which all the really big, successful reform movements in the country had extremely bizarre ideological coalitions.

  Chris Hayes

  Country, Good Life, Real

  Source: www.salon.com

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• Scaling back the campaign finance reform bill may get more Republicans aboard, but it leaves many of us who have been involved in the reform movement for years in believing that we are doing something and accomplishing nothing.

  Robert Torricelli

  Believe, Years, Reform

  "Senate to take up softened campaign finance reform" by Jonathan Karl, www.cnn.com. October 12, 1999.

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• Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region.

  Frank Carlucci

  Kings, Qatar, Effort

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