Reform Quotes - Page 7

• It is always useful, you see, to subject the past life of reform politicians to rather inquisitive research.

  Isaac Asimov

  Past, Research, Politician

  Isaac Asimov (1950). “I, Robot”, Roc

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• Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Tasks, Would Be, Enough

  "La Loi (The Law)". Book by Frederic Bastiat, 1850.

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• ...I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

  Patrick O'Brian

  Loyalty, Men, Feelings

  Patrick O'Brian (1990). “Master and Commander (Vol. Book 1)”, p.194, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms.

  Temple Grandin

  Steel, Heat, Bigs

  Temple Grandin, Catherine Johnson (2010). “Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals”, p.256, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

  Cyril Connolly

  Dream, Selfish, Night

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reform. It does not haggle over expenditures for armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

  Anatole France

  Military, War, Patriotic

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• When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Heart, Love Is, Generosity

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti: 1948-1949 : Choiceless awareness”, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company

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• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most sweeping civil rights legislation of its day, and included women's rights as part of its reforms. Ironically, the section on women's rights was added by a senator from Virginia who opposed the whole thing and was said to be sure that if he stuck something about womens' rights into it, it would never pass. The bill passed anyway, though, much to the chagrin of a certain wiener from Virginia.

  Adam Selzer

  Rights, Virginia, Bills

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• Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.

  Umberto Eco

  School, Irrelevance, Numbers

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't know who had the training of you," he continued doggedly, "but your morals are shocking. You spent a night in my bed, remember, after a night in a bawdy house. You go about collecting street urchins and letting inebriated vagabonds kiss you, and then you get into brawls in pawnshops. You are probably past all redemption, but I'm going to reform you anyhow. If you behave yourself, perhaps I'll let you reform me on occasion, but I make no promises.

  Loretta Chase

  Kissing, Past, Night

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• There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact - in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself - of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were.

  David Foster Wallace

  Dialect, Facts, Helping

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• You cheated!” He looked at her, wide-eyed with feigned outrage. “I beg your pardon. If you were a man, I would call you out for that accusation.” “And I assure you, my lord, that I would ride forth victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness.” “Are you quoting the Bible to me?” “Indeed,” she said primly, the portrait of piousness. “While gambling.” “What better location to attempt to reform one such as you?

  Sarah MacLean

  Humility, Men, Gambling

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• We're so busy resigning ourselves to the inevitable that we don't even ask if it is inevitable. We've got to have courage, to take our future into our hands. If the law is oppressive, we must change the law. If tradition is obstructive, we must break tradition. If the system is unjust, we must reform the system.

  Winifred Holtby

  Hands, Law, Unjust

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

  Derrick Bell

  Empathy, Enlightenment, Way

  Derrick A. Bell (1992). “Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism”, p.150, Basic Books

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• The Americans as a nation are killing themselves with their vices and high living. As much as a man ought to eat in half an hour they swallow in three minutes gulping down their food like the [dog] under the table which when a chunk of meat is thrown down to it swallows it before you can say 'twice.' If you want a reform carry out the advice I have just given you. Dispense with your multitudinous dishes, and, depend upon it, you will do much towards preserving your families from sickness, disease and death.

  Brigham Young

  Dog, Men, Disease And Death

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• Until you're grown-up they send you to reform school. After you're grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Growing Up, School, Growing Old

  Ernest Hemingway, Sean Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on Hunting”, p.236, Simon and Schuster

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• What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets ? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures.

  George MacDonald

  Pride, Boys, Conceited

  George Macdonald (2012). “The Lost Princess: A Double Tale”, p.39, Simon and Schuster

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• To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.

  Michael Polanyi

  Men, Trying, Use

  Michael Polanyi, Harry Prosch (2008). “Meaning”, p.214, University of Chicago Press

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• They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.

  Frantz Fanon

  Mean, Doe, Lasts

  Frantz Fanon (2007). “The Wretched of the Earth”, p.79, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.

  William Hazlitt

  Lying, Hate, Eye

  William Hazlitt (1826). “The plain speaker: opinions on books, men, and things [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.364

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• Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction.

  Gary L. Francione

  Baby, Peace, Movement

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• Well, Luce, my dear, you may have gone to boarding school parties, but you've never seen a throw-down like reform school kids do it.

  Lauren Kate

  Party, School, Kids

  Lauren Kate (2013). “The Fallen Series: 4-Book Collection”, p.38, Delacorte Press

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• The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God's presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God's word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.

  J. I. Packer

  Christian, Meditation, Healthy

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• On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Atheist, Real

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

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• You know, Roland and I were just talking about how we don't have any pyromaniac friends. And everyone knows you need a good pyro to pull off any reform school prank worth the effort.

  Lauren Kate

  School, Talking, Effort

  Lauren Kate (2013). “The Fallen Series: 4-Book Collection”, p.78, Delacorte Press

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