Reform Quotes - Page 25

• It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.

  Moliere

  Society, Trying, World

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• Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

  Samuel Smiles

  Evil, Political, Individual

  "Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic". Book by Timothy Travers, 1987.

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• The ACLU's record, far from showing a momentary wavering from impartiality, is replete with attemps to reform American society according to the wisdom of liberalism. The truth of the matters is that the ACLU has always been a highly politicized organization.

  William Anthony Donohue

  Organization, Records, Politics

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• My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions.

  John Ray

  Thinking, People, Citizens

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• Liberals are wrong to think that opposition to health reform is a rejection of big government. If health reform consisted of extending Medicare to everyone, people would be delighted. There are millions of 64-year-olds out there who can hardly wait to be 65.

  Marcia Angell

  Thinking, Government, Years

  "Message from Massachusetts" by Marcia Angell, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 23, 2010.

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• He had fallen into the error of all liberals: the belief that men are prepared to reform themselves, that good will attracts good will, that truth has leavening virtue of its own.

  Morris West

  Men, Errors, Belief

  Morris West (1977). “The devil's advocate ; The second victory ; Daughter of silence ; The salamander ; The shoes of the fisherman”

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• ...it happens that society is saved as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy is forthwith punished as an assault upon society and is branded as Socialism.

  Karl Marx

  Simple, Class, Circles

  Karl Marx (2008). “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, p.9, Cosimo, Inc.

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• As soon as the people fix one Shame of the World, another turns up.

  E. W. Howe

  People, World, Shame

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• If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Pain, Men, Doe

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.55, Xist Publishing

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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

  Irony, Reformers, Consequence

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

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• Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.

  William Hazlitt

  Rights, Settings, Objections

  William Hazlitt (1837). “Characteristics: in the manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims [by W. Hazlitt].”, p.148

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• You've tried to reform what will not learn. Shut doors on traits that you wish were dead; They will open a window and return.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Doors, Wish, Return

  Jean de La Fontaine (1964). “The fables of La Fontaine”

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• All the evil in the world is the fault of the self-styled pure in heart, a result of their eagerness to unearth secrets and expose them to the light of the sun.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Heart, Light, Self

  Jean Giraudoux (1964). “Collected Plays of Jean Giradoux”

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• The Democratic Party is not the party of reform.

  Richard Lamm

  Party, Democratic, Democratic Party

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• I am a correctionist. If something is wrong in society, it must be fixed. At least one should try to fix it.

  Gore Vidal

  Trying, Should, Fixed

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• I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.

  James Fallows

  Patents, Giants, Ongoing

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• Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.

  Clara Zetkin

  Struggle, Class, Political

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• Religion can reform a person’s life, but it can never transform him. Only the Holy Spirit can transform!

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Spirit, Holy, Persons

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• Lord, reform Thy world, beginning with me.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  World, Lord

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1941). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1941, Volume 10”, p.561, Best Books on

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• To err and not reform, this may indeed be called error.

  Confucius

  Errors, May

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• Many-have too rashly charged the troops of error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth.

  Thomas Browne

  Errors, Enemy, Troops

  'Religio Medici' (1643) pt. 1, sect. 6

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• Self-reform is the only kind that works.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Literature, Kind

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• The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Political, Negative, May

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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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 largely in favor of financial reform.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Favors, Financial

  "Case against Goldman is 'very weak'". CNN Interview, www.cnn.com. April 22, 2010.

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