Reform Quotes - Page 40

• I have been urging the leaders to listen to the aspirations and challenges of their own people, and engage in dialogue and take very bold measures. Normally, to their regret, these measures and bold reforms come too late, too little.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Regret, People, Leader

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• It is only natural that people's wishes and aspirations should be realized by the leaders of the region. As this wind of change blows, it is up to the leaders to seize this opportunity to look for the better future for their own people through bold reforms before it is too late, before the people are forced to take action.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Blow, Opportunity, Wind

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a dead ape and work downward through a million graves.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Apes, Graves

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1216, Delphi Classics

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• The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution?

  Walter E. Williams

  Issues, Would Be, Campaigns

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• Because clearly the most amazing thing had happened: by some chance - no, the lover does not believe in chance, but destiny - destiny had arranged it so that the man and woman who had made the original whole, then somehow divided and separated by an angry God, had met up again, and now must reform the rightful, righteous whole. At once!

  Fay Weldon

  Believe, Destiny, Men

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• If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Government, Care

  B. L. Rayner, Thomas Jefferson (1834). “Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait”, p.349

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• We will push through health care reform regardless of the views of the American people.

  Jay Rockefeller

  Views, People, Care

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• Censorship is always cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think.

  Julian Assange

  Mean, Opportunity, Thinking

  "'When Google Met WikiLeaks': An Exclusive Excerpt". Interview with Scott Malcomson, www.truthdig.com. October 30, 2014.

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• If you don't try to generate more revenues through tax reform, if you don't ask, you know, the most fortunate Americans to bear a slightly larger burden of the privilege of being an American, then you have to - the only way to achieve fiscal sustainability is through unacceptably deep cuts in benefits for middle class seniors, or unacceptably deep cuts in national security.

  Timothy Geithner

  Senior, Cutting, Class

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• The combination of the growth of these digital technologies, the ability of the government to conjure up these secret interpretations, plus a very unusual and novel court make for this ever-expanding surveillance state. We so treasure our freedoms; we will regret it if our generation doesn't use this unique time to reform the surveillance laws and make it clear that security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can do both.

  Ron Wyden

  Regret, Unique, Technology

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

  George Ayittey

  Blood, Hands, Survivor

  "George Ayittey: How to Defeat a Dictator". Interview with Thor Halvorssen, www.huffingtonpost.com.

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• If we don't reform how healthcare is delivered in this country, then we are not going to be able to get a handle on that escalating healthcare costs.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Cost, Able

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• Putin has reversed all the liberalizing reforms carried out by his predecessor.

  Alexei Navalny

  Putin, Predecessors

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• For many years, we have had these campaign finance reforms, and they have been failures. Money is more coursing through our system than ever before. Incumbents have used the laws to advantage themselves. And one of the reasons I think they have been failures is we have tried to crush down the money in places like the political parties, and it has squished out into opaque super PACs and sort of hidden channels.

  Mark Shields

  Crush, Party, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• From 1976, Judy to 1996, we had six presidential elections. And it was run under the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 1974. In all six of them, every candidate agreed to limits of what he could collect in contributions and what he could spend in seeking a nomination. And they all abided by it.

  Mark Shields

  Running, Presidential, Campaigns

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It's just a lot safer to be an incumbent. So I think they have used the campaign finance reforms. They have passed laws that will help themselves stay in office. And I think that's one of the flaws that we do have in the system.

  David Brooks

  Thinking, Law, Office

  "Shields and Brooks on the power of campaign donors, baseball vs. baby". "News Hour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. April 4, 2014.

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• I don't believe that military intervention is always the right approach. What we need is a comprehensive strategy, one that advances democratization, economic reforms and equal rights for women.

  Zalmay Khalilzad

  Military, Believe, Rights

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Already were seeing graduates of U.S. higher education going back to their home countries and contributing to societies there, where in the past they would have stayed in the U.S. and built new companies here. We have to have immigration reform that allows talented foreigners to become Americans.

  David Malpass

  Country, Home, Past

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• The reforms proposed by the Patent Reform Act of 2007 are precisely the type of congressional action needed. The Act will remove obstacles to growth and restore balance to the patent system.

  Viet D. Dinh

  Growth, Balance, Patents

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• We came to recognize that our initial thinking about the keys to educational reform was wrong. The key variables weren't pedagogical. They weren't financial. They weren't curricular. They weren't research. They weren't any of the usual things we've always talked about as the engines of change. The variables were deeply emotional and cultural.

  David Edward

  Educational, Emotional, Thinking

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• Challenges, when you're in a tumultuous situation, are an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to get closer to God, an opportunity to find and kind of reform yourself, and to figure out what really matters and what your priorities are.

  Essence Atkins

  Opportunity, Priorities, Challenges

  "Essence Atkins ‘Are We There Yet?’". Interview with Kam Williams, newsblaze.com. October 19, 2010.

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• Drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.

  Carl R Trueman

  Drinking, Beer, Two

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• The DOJ has employed these investigations in communities across our nation to reform serious patterns and practices of force, biased policing and other unconstitutional practices by law enforcement. I'm asking the Department of Justice to investigate if our police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of stops, searches or arrests that violate the Fourth Amendment.

  Stephanie Rawlings-Blake

  Law, Practice, Justice

  "Source: Justice Department to investigate Baltimore police" by Dana Ford, www.cnn.com. May 7, 2015.

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• Islam doesn't need reform, we need to reform the Muslim mind.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Mind, Islam, Needs

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• As the head of the government, it is my responsibility to make the overriding political goals and relationships more clear. Part of the reason the public didn't understand some of the reforms enacted during the past legislative period was that there was far too much talk about the details, while the general picture often remained invisible.

  Angela Merkel

  Responsibility, Past, Government

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