Reformers Quotes - Page 5

• A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the
  great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also,
  and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are
  commonly treated as enemies by it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hero, Men, Enemy

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.3, Cambridge University Press

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• The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts

  D.T. Suzuki

  Religious, Struggle, Heart

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• A great social reformer.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Moral, Manners, Social

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• We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

  Margaret Case Harriman

  Air, Reform, Pillars

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• The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place - but sinners after all.

  J. C. Ryle

  Father, Men, Needs

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• The blind spot for the in the Southern Progressive Movement - as for that matter in the national [progressive] movement - was the Negro, for the whole movement in the South coincided paradoxically with the crest of the wave of racism. Still more important to the association of the two movements was the fact that their leaders were often identical. In fact, the typical Progressive reformer rode to power in the South on a disenfranchising or white-supremacy movement.

  C. Vann Woodward

  Philosophy, Two, Blind Spots

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• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Faith Religion, Office, Superstitions

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin. Reports and opinions while Secretary of State”, p.167

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• It’s unlikely to change – there’s nothing in King Salman’s past as governor of Riyadh for about forty years that suggests that he was particularly a reformer, not on the role of women, not on democratic development. There’s been a rumor in the last couple of days that he said to someone in an e-mail that he’s in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but I would be surprised if the level of repression started to go down … I think the kind of thing that we would view as significant reforms is unlikely.

  Elliott Abrams

  Kings, Couple, Thinking

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• When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

  Lord Acton

  Art, Criminals, Lasts

  Lord Acton (2016). “The History of Freedom: Great Event”, p.39, VM eBooks

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• Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place.

  Austin O'Malley

  Reform, Vehement, Pairs

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• Thus those reformers, who look for a remedy by creating artificial carrying-costs for the money through the device of requiring legal-tender currency to be periodically stamped at a prescribed cost in order to retain its quality as money, or in analogous ways, have been on the right track; and the practical value of their proposals deserves consideration.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Order, Creating, Track

  "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money". Book by John Maynard Keynes, Book 4, Chapter 17, Section 3, p. 234, February 1936.

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• George W. Bush has a new campaign slogan: "A reformer with results." I don't know what it means [but] I think it's better than his old campaign slogan: "A dumb guy with connections.

  David Letterman

  Mean, Thinking, Guy

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• This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really understand anything the Bible says. We are in a situation analogous to one about which the great Reformers complained. The Bible has been taken out of the hands of the layperson; it has now become the professional property not of the priesthood but of the scholars.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Christian, Taken, Exercise

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• Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Light, Moral, Sometimes

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.421

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• Others - as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders - serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few - as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men - serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Hero, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.3, Cambridge University Press

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• Some reformers may urge that in the ages distant future, patriotism, like the habit of monogamous marriage, will become a needless and obsolete virtue; but just at present the man who loves other countries as much as he does his own is quite as noxious a member of society as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his wife. Love of country is an elemental virtue, like love of home.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Country, Home, Men

  Theodore Roosevelt (1897). “American ideals and other essays, social and political”

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• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Mean, Writing

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• Those who have heard or read anything from me on the subject, know that one of the principal points insisted on is, the forming of societies or any other artificial combinations IS the first, greatest, and most fatal mistake ever committed by legislators and by reformers.

  Josiah Warren

  Mistake, Firsts, Combination

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• You cannot have a good character today and at the same time have a small mind and a little heart. You cannot have a good character today and be merely a petty reformer.

  A. Powell Davies

  Heart, Character, Mind

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• The Reformers, therefore, as instruments in the hands of God, in delivering the Church from bondage to prelates, did not make it a tumultuous multitude, in which every man was a law to himself, free to believe, and free to do what he pleased.

  Charles Hodge

  Believe, Men, Hands

  Charles Hodge (1855). “What is Presbyterianism?: An Address Delivered Before the Presbyterian Historical Society at Their Anniversary Meeting in Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, May 1, 1855”, p.13

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• Some of the greatest social reformers of our time were wealthy.

  Jerry Rubin

  Social, Wealthy, Our Time

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• Pilates is my favorite meditative way to get in shape. I don't like the gym and I don't like running, so I just lay on my Pilates reformer. It's great.

  Lyndsy Fonseca

  Running, Shapes, Pilates

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

  Walt Whitman

  Individuality, Conformity, Institutions

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• We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

  George W. Bush

  Community, Peaceful, Historical

  United Nations General Assembly Address, delivered 21 September 2004, New York, NY

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• Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

  Russell Kirk

  Real, Order, Doctrine

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.30, Regnery Publishing

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