An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness. — Clara Barton
Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak. — Karl Marx
The church is always trying to get other people to reform, it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example — Mark Twain
Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination — Mother Jones
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
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. — Mark Twain
In politics, reform never comes before crisis. — Tucker Carlson
You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land. — Billy Sunday
Reformation is a return to the sound doctrine of the Bible. Revival is the practice of that sound doctrine under the power of the Holy Spirit. — Francis Schaeffer
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious. — Mark Twain
A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now. — Mort Sahl
One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism — Peter L. Berger
Short Reform Movements Quotes
You are not likely to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation. — Richard Baxter
The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers. — Sayings
Islam doesn't need reform, we need to reform the Muslim mind. — Tariq Ramadan
Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary. — Josip Broz Tito
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. — Robert Green Ingersoll
Reform Movements Image Quotes
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.
Social Reform Quotes
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. — John Dewey
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. — John Rawls
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you-the social reformers-see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. — Isaiah Berlin
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Social Security must be preserved and strengthened. But we need to be candid about the costs and willing to make the tough choices that real reform will require. — Lindsey Graham
In the past 20 years and more since China embarked on the road of reform and opening up, we have moved steadfastly to promote political restructuring and vigorously build democratic politics under socialism. — Hu Jintao
Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility. — Rebecca West
In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.
We have a serious structural deficit problem. And it needs to be addressed. The president is trying to address it through reforms of Social Security, but the problem is there with other entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. — John W. Snow
The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue in U.S. society, whether domestic or foreign. — Noel Ignatiev
In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old. — Alfred Marshall
Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation. — Susan B. Anthony
Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region. — Frank Carlucci
Let’s cut the top rates of stamp duty to enable more movement to take place and also looking at the broader tax reform, simplifying our tax system. — Liz Truss
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
The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage. — Carl Bernstein
There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn't have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement. — Bob Hawke
Middle-class-led reform movements, from the Progressive Era to the War on Poverty, have been marred by an elitist distance from the would-be beneficiaries of reform. — Barbara Ehrenreich
Welfare reforms and the whole “happy” exploitation movement are not “baby steps.” They are big steps–in a seriously backward direction. — Gary L. Francione
Conservatism has always been about reforming government and solving problems, and that's why the conservative movement should lead on immigration reform. — Marco Rubio
The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half. — Andrew Greeley
We must experiment, fail, and try again, but beginning with a critique of legal reform and a commitment to center the most vulnerable moves us away from some of the most common, obvious pitfalls of neoliberal social movement strategies. — Dean Spade
Bourgeois society is not fundamentally opposed to the bourgeois women's movement, which is proven by the fact that in various states reforms of private and public laws concerning women have been initiated. — Clara Zetkin
I can think of few important movements for reform in which success was won by any method other than that of an energetic minority presenting the indifferent majority with a fait accompli, which was then accepted. — Vera Brittain
If you look at the way all of the new reform movements dedicated to the public interest are living and thriving on the Internet, I do think there is still some considerable hope that the full participation of individuals in that conversation of democracy can once again restore the integrity of the way our democracy works. — Al Gore
In addition to encouraging us to participate in narratives of "deservingness" that cast large parts of our constituencies as "undeserving," legal reform strategies encourage us to valorize harmful systems that our movements should be seeking to dismantle. — Dean Spade
Many Americans do not realize that we could institute proportional representation for most elections in the U.S. without amending the Constitution. In helping to educate the public about the potential for voting system reform, CVD can play a central role in a pro-democracy movement right here in America! — John Anderson
In Iran the whole reform and democracy movement has been based on the emerging free press. — Christiane Amanpour
I'm serious about this. The Republican Party needs to reform or die. President Bush did three things. He destroyed the Republican majority, he crippled the American conservative movement and he weakened the country. That's a hell of a trifecta. — Joe Scarborough
If Dr. Mahathir thinks that by ordering the police to act like gangsters he will frighten the people from supporting this reformation movement, he is dreaming. I think he has cut himself off from reality. — Wan Azizah Wan Ismail
I have no question that Newt Gingrich has the heart of a conservative reformer, the ability to rally and captivate the conservative movement. — Rick Perry
The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare. Nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements. — John Marshall Harlan
A judgment pronounced in accordance with the facts can therefore assign to it an historical place only within that movement of reformation which was brought to a victorious issue by King Josiah. — Julius Wellhausen
The radical ideas of one generation have become the common sense of the next. We all stand on the shoulders of earlier generations of reformers, radicals, and idealists who challenged the status quo of their day. They helped change America by organizing movements, pushing for radical reforms, popularizing progressive ideas, and spurring others to action. — Peter Dreier
The lunatic fringe in all reform movements. — Theodore Roosevelt
Small acts can drive reforms. What appears minor can actually be vital and fundamental. Generating 20,000 MW of power attracts a lot of attention. That is important. At the same time, 20,000 MW of power can be saved through a people's movement for energy efficiency. The second is more difficult but is as important as the first. Small indeed, is beautiful. — Narendra Modi
Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. — Rebecca Harding Davis
Many of the received models of modern architecture and planning owe their ultimate origin to the building code and public health reform movements of the second half of the 19th century. — Kenneth Frampton
In every industrialized nation, the movement to reform health care has begun with stories about cruelty. — Atul Gawande
for me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform. — Vivian Gornick
I don't think polarization is some kind of grand distraction. It's real. People have different commitments, believe in different things and principles, different visions of the good life ... but there is also a degree to which all the really big, successful reform movements in the country had extremely bizarre ideological coalitions. — Chris Hayes
Among the wise and high-minded people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a movement and always discrediting it the men who form the lunatic fringe in all reform movements. — Theodore Roosevelt
It is beyond doubt that the chief motive of Vegetarianism is the humane one. Questions of hygiene and of economy both play their part, and an important part, in a full discussion of food reform; but the feeling which underlies and animates the whole movement is the instinctive horror of butchery, especially the butchery of the more highly organized animals, so human, so near akin to man. — Henry Stephens Salt
Scaling back the campaign finance reform bill may get more Republicans aboard, but it leaves many of us who have been involved in the reform movement for years in believing that we are doing something and accomplishing nothing. — Robert Torricelli
Expect the rapidly expanding homeschooling movement to play a significant role in the revolutionary reforms needed to build a free society with Constitutional protections. — Ron Paul
Climaxing a movement for calendar reform which had been developing for at least a century, in 1582 Pope Gregory ordained that October 4 was to be followed by October 15. — Daniel J. Boorstin
As Dr. King said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. It is that creed of the civil rights movement that still motivates us today...So today, we take up the cause of joining arms with our immigrant brothers and sisters in that spirit... to lend a hand to those who confront injustice as a result of a broken immigration system. — Steven Horsford
This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them. — Doris Lessing
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