quotations about reform
I see dull people as projects ... to be reformed.
BEN ELTON
Two Brothers
Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.
EMMELINE PANKHURST
My Own Story
Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes.
EDGAR WATSON HOWE
Country Town Sayings
We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
preface, Misalliance
Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.
DERRICK A. BELL
Faces at the Bottom of the Well
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
If you want a man to succeed in the reform of his affairs which are in a deadlock and mess, you must self-evidently first of all tell him how to reform the instrument with which he has to carry out that reform--the instrument, viz, the man himself.
CONFUCIUS
The Universal Order: Or, Conduct of Life, a Confucian Catechism
Whatever statesman or sage will effect reforms upon a gigantic or godlike scale must begin with the young.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions.
G. K. CHESTERTON
All Is Grist: A Book of Essays
That man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.
SENECA
Letters from a Stoic
Sustainable reform is more likely to occur if leaders plot in advance where they want to go, and what steps they need to take -- and in what order -- to get there.
CLAY WESCOTT
"Civil Service Reform in Africa", Civil Service Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean: Proceedings of a Conference
Neither fire, sword, nor banishment can retard reform, but it rather hastens it forward.
JACQUES AUGUSTE DE THOU
attributed, Day's Collacon
A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with.
WENDELL BERRY
The Art of the Commonplace: Agrarian Essays
I have no desire whatever to reform myself. My only desire is to reform people who try to reform me. And I believe that the only way to reform people is to kill 'em.
CARL PANZRAM
Panzram: A Journal of Murder
To discard what is unwanted, and to retain what is needed, is what reform means.
PERIYAR E. V. RAMASAMY
Collected Works
Fear not to reform.
CONFUCIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Whatever you dislike in another person, take care to reform in yourself.
THOMAS SPRATT
attributed, Day's Collacon
Reform has usually been the work of reason slowly awakening from the lethargy of ignorance, gradually acquiring confidence in her own strength, and ultimately triumphing over the dominion of prejudice and custom.
SAMUEL PARR
Aphorisms, Opinions and Reflections of the late Dr. Parr
All violence demands reform, and all violence desperately begs to be healed.
BRYANT MCGILL
Voice of Reason
They were apt vociferously to demand "reform" as if it were some concrete substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor reformers made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticising; and they delighted in criticising the men who really were doing the things which they said ought to be done, but which they lacked the sinewy power to do. They often upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very politicians to whom they professed to be most hostile. Moreover, if they believed their own interests, individually or as a class, were jeoparded, they were apt to show no higher standards than did the men they usually denounced.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
An Autobiography