Reform Quotes

• Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hard Work, Suffering, Pleasant

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• Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.

  Rebecca West

  Men, Civilization, Sometimes

  Rebecca West (2010). “The New Meaning of Treason”, p.182, Open Road Media

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• Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Age, Opinion, Privacy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.16, Graphic Arts Books

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• Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations... can never effect a reform.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Strong Women, Inspiration, People

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• To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Wise, Men, Foolish Man

  1829 Signs of the Times.

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• Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Mind, Atheism, Needs

  Biographia Literaria ch. 1 (1817)

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• I think that I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Voice, Events, May

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• He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Done, Crowds, Patriot

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• Reform, that we may preserve.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  May, Reformation, Preserves

  Debate on the First Reform Bill, March 2, 1831.

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• The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform.

  Earl Browder

  Champion, Communist

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• I believe in health care reform. I don't believe in the way this bill was passed.

  Joe Manchin

  Believe, Care, I Believe

  "Manchin Calls for Partial Repeal of Health Reform" by Erin McPike and Scott Conroy, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 27, 2010.

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• But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

  Robert Waterman McChesney

  Political, Culture, Campaigns

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• I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.

  Robert Jay Lifton

  Military, Interesting, Important

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• I have been very careful to put forward new ideas - on tackling inequality, extending democratic reform and the green agenda, because I think these are all absolutely fundamental to a successful next period of office for Labour

  Peter Hain

  Successful, Thinking, Ideas

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• An indefinable something is to be done, in a way nobody knows how, at a time nobody knows when, that will accomplish nobody knows what.

  Bill Vaughan

  Done, Way, Accomplish

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• Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.

  Oscar Wilde

  World, Want

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• If immigration reform passes, it'll be a big victory for sanity - nobody really believes it's healthy for a country to have millions and millions of undocumented noncitizens living in the shadows. But it'll also be a sign that the Republican Party has gotten tired of letting the Tea Party push it around.

  Gail Collins

  Country, Party, Believe

  "An Ethnic Map". Interview with David Brooks, opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. May 8, 2013.

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• Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal.

  Elizabeth Fry

  Forgiveness, Revenge, Punishment

  Quoted in Rachel E Cresswell and Katharine Fry Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry (1848).

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• To innovate is not to reform.

  Edmund Burke

  Innovation, Reformation

  A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)

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• But God will have a people upon the earth to maintain the Bible, and the Bible only, as the standard of all doctrines and the basis of all reforms.

  Ellen G. White

  People, Doctrine, Earth

  Ellen G. White (2013). “Ellen G. White Review and Herald Articles - Book IV of IV”, p.383, Lulu Press, Inc

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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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• People who have reformed themselves has contributed their full share towards the reformation of their neighbor.

  Norman Douglas

  People, Neighbor, Share

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• A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

  Lydia M. Child

  Defeat, Reformers

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• Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Religion, Atheism, Slavery

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1182, Library of Alexandria

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