Reformers Quotes - Page 6

• Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes.

  E. W. Howe

  Men, Reform, Peer Pressure

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• We will meet our challenges head on and we will do it by rejecting the politics of mediocrity and corruption. You voted for change; I intend to deliver it. ... I will govern as a reformer.

  Rod Blagojevich

  Challenges, Mediocrity, Corruption

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• Deng Xiaoping thought of himself as a great revolutionary and a great reformer. He had dismantled the Chinese communist management of the economy. In my next-to-last conversation with him, which was about six months before Tiananmen Square, he said to me that his aim would be the next phase to reduce the Communist Party to philosophical issues. And I said, "What's a philosophical issue?" And he said, "Well, like if we make an alliance with Russia." Given his view of Russia, that was not the likeliest thing that would ever happen.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Philosophical, Party, Views

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Hindu philosophy was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the advent and the teachings of the Lord Buddha. I revere Buddha as a reformer of not only Hinduism but also the world, who has given all of us a new world view and vision which is critical for the survival of all of us and the entire world.

  Narendra Modi

  Motivation, Philosophy, Teaching

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• When we see a special reformer we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your own virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Special, Asking, Philanthropy

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• Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Class, Evil, Darkness

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.554, Рипол Классик

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• Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk and truth the root. CHARLES CALEB COLTON, Lacon; Or, Many Things in a Few Words 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

  Maturity, Light, Roots

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• It is one of the ironies of history that reformers so often misjudge the consequences of their reforms.

  John W. Gardner

  Reform, Irony, Consequence

  Dr. John W. Gardner (2015). “Excellence: Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?”, p.13, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• [Consider] a fence or gate erected across a road] The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Intelligent, Thinking, Going Away

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• Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their own chaos.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Order, Roots, Chaos

  William Irwin Thompson (1977). “Evil and world order”

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• The reformer is careless of numbers, disregards popularity, and deals only with ideas, conscience, and common sense. He feels, with Copernicus, that as God waited long for an interpreter, so he can wait for his followers.

  Wendell Phillips

  Ideas, Numbers, Long

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• I'm not any kind of social reformer.

  Charles Kuralt

  Kind, Social

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• There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.

  Walter Lippmann

  Men, Average, Faces

  Walter Lippmann (1914). “A Preface to Politics”

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• For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. 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

  Names, Long, Community

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

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• Now the sole remedy for the abuse of political power is to limit it; but when politics corrupt business, modern reformers invariably demand the enlargement of the political power.

  Isabel Paterson

  Business, Political, Abuse

  Isabel Paterson (1993). “The God of the Machine”, p.171, Transaction Publishers

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• Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Glasses, Religion, Boots

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains.

  Gertrude Atherton

  Long, People, Brain

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• But the most annoying of all public reformers is the personal satirist. Though he may be considered by some few as a useful member of society, yet he is only ranked with the hangman, whom we tolerate because he executes the judgment we abhor to do ourselves, and avoid with a natural detestation of his office. The pen of the one and the cord of the other are inseparable in our minds.

  Jane Porter

  Office, Mind, May

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• Thus, at long last, as a visible emblem of unity was daily growing in the new Palace of Justice then being erected in the Strand, half way between the historic site of Westminster the historic centre of the commercial capital of the world, there began to grow up, in the minds of reformers, the vision of a great and united Supreme Court of Justice, with uniform principles, uniform law, and uniform procedure.

  Edward Jenks

  Growing Up, Law, Justice

  "A Short History Of The English Law". Book by Edward Jenks, (First Edition), Chapter XIX, Modern Civil Procedure, p. 364, 1912.

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• If we like a man's dream, we call him a reformer; if we don't like his dream, we call him a crank.

  William Dean Howells

  Dream, Men, Political

  William Dean Howells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells (Illustrated)”, p.4038, Delphi Classics

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• The hammer and the anvil are the two hemispheres of every true reformer's character.

  J. G. Holland

  Character, Power, Two

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• We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although as poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.

  William Booth

  Beer, Men, Light

  William Booth (2014). “In Darkest England and the Way Out”, p.48, Cambridge University Press

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• It is one of the consolations of middle aged reformers that the good that they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Optimism, Pessimism, Middle

  'Beasts and Super-Beasts' (1914) 'The Byzantine Omelette'

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• Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain.

  George Orwell

  Pain, Stupid, Our World

  George Orwell (1961). “1984”

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• Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Educational, Angel

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.60, Routledge

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