Reform Quotes

“I'm not good," he said, piercing me with eyes that absorbed all light but reflected none, "but I was worse.”
― Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush

“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

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship”
― Robert Green Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IV

“In fact, once he is motivated no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom. I call myself the best example of that.”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”
― Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.”
― Derrick A. Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism

“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. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.
But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“A desire to be apart, sometimes, to understand who I am without the rest. And what I return to, the me-ness that I know as pure, inescapable self . . . . is hunger. Desire. Longing, this longing to possess, to become, to break like a wave on a rock and reform, and break again, and wash away.”
― Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, 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: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium (Illustrated. Newly revised text. Includes Image Gallery + Audio): All Three Volumes

“أعرف أنك تجلس وأنت غارق في سوء الحال تنتظر اليوم الذي تتحقق فيه المعجزة ويتغير فيه حاكم مصر لينصلح حالها، لكن ذلك لن يحدث أبدًا طالما لم أدرك أنا وأنت أن سوء الحال نابع من سوء الأداء، لو لم يسأل كل منا نفسه عما فعله لإصلاح ما حوله أو الاعتراض عليه، لو لم يدرك كل منا أن معركته الحقيقية تبدأ من داخل بيته وأنه إذا لم ينتصر فيها أولاً فلن ننتصر في أي شيء، لو لم يدرك كل منا أن خلاصنا في تثوير القرآن وتطبيق مقاصد الإسلام قبل أشكاله، لو لم يدرك كل منا أننا لا شيء بدون الحرية والعلم وأن الحقوق تنتزع ولا توهب، وأننا سنظل مهددين بالتوربيني الصغير طالما سمحنا للتوربينات الكبار أن يرتعوا في الأرض فاسدين مكتفين بالشتيمة والسخط والكوميديا السوداء.”
― بلال فضل, السكان الأصليين لمصر

“The spirit is one of the most neglected parts of man by doctors and scientists around the world. Yet, it is as vital to our health as the heart and mind. It's time for science to examine the many facets of the soul. The condition of our soul is usually the source of many sicknesses.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“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

“The health care bill is nothing about health care- it's about controlling the people.”
― David Lincoln

“... the transition from lost to found is never an easy one. It is never easy to be a prodigal son -- or daughter. It is never easy to say, 'I will arise and go to my father ...' (Luke 15:18, 19). This is never easy, because it is not until our situation becomes completely hopeless that we can humble ourselves to the extent of admitting that such a gross mistake was our own.”
― Robert L. Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts

“Reconciliation means that those who have been on the underside of history must see that there is a qualitative difference between repression and freedom. And for them, freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap; being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless.'
-archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, 2001”
― Naomi Klein

“Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice.”
― Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“ask yourself how many people you have met who grumbled at a thing as incurable, and how many who attacked it as curable? How many people we have heard abuse the British elementary schools, as they would abuse the British climate? How few have we met who realized that British education can be altered, but British weather cannot?...For a thousand that regret compulsory education, where is the hundred, or the ten, or the one, who would repeal compulsory education? …At the beginning of our epoch men talked with equal ease about Reform and Repeal. Now everybody talks about reform; nobody talks about repeal.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State

“Reforms will come as all great reforms have always come in ridding us of evils against both man and animal--not as we change our moral principles but as we discern and accept the implications of principles already held.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“I was trying to foment a little dissension.' He paused. 'No, that's too flippant. How about trying to make the system less warlike—injecting a little love?' He snorted. 'Through violence, of course, like all religious reformers.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., The Parafaith War

“In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?

It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.

It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.

What's good for reform is bad for the reformers”
― Loren D. Estleman, Gas City

“I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid.”
― Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

“Doch was [Olof] Palme in seinem Modernisierungseifer nicht verstehen konnte oder wollte, war, dass die akademischen Spinnweben auch für eine demokratisierte Hochschule von einigem Wert waren. Die Universitäten repräsentierten eine zivile Gesellschaft sowohl außerhalb des Staates als auch der Marktwirtschaft; sie waren eine andere Sphäre, die von der Jagd nach höherer Produktivität unberührt war, an der Wirtschaft und Sozialdemokratie natürlich teilnahmen. Den Universitäten und den Akademikern gegen ihren Willen Reformen aufzuzwingen untergrub ihr Selbstvertrauen und schadete auf lange Sicht der akademischen Freiheit.”
― Henrik Berggren, Underbara dagar framför oss: En biografi över Olof Palme

“A lot of the pride I felt was overshadowed by guilt, and I’ve since poured over so many studies about how gifted programs mainly benefit white and wealthy students— not because they’re smarter, just because the whole goddamn system is rigged to their benefit.”
― Elise Bryant

“Finally, we will note that the resolution, by making implementation of the minimum program provisional revolutionary government’s task eliminates the absurd, semi-anarchist ideas about giving immediate effect to the maximum program, and the conquest of power for a socialist revolution. The degree of economic development of Russia (an objective condition) and the degree of class consciousness and organisation of the broad masses of the proletariat (a subjective condition inseparably connected with the objective condition) make the immediate complete emancipation of the working class impossible. Only the most ignorant people can ignore the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place; only the most naive optimists can forget how little as yet the masses of the workers are informed about the aims of Socialism and about the methods of achieving it. And we are all convinced that the emancipation of the workers can be effected only by the workers themselves; a socialist revolution is out of the question unless the masses become class conscious and organised, trained and educated in open class struggle against the entire bourgeoisie. In answer to the anarchist objections that we are putting off the socialist revolution, we say: we are not putting it off, but we are taking the first step towards it in the only possible way, along the only correct road, namely, the road of a democratic republic. Whoever wants to reach Socialism by a different road, other than that of political democracy, will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. If any workers ask us at the given moment why we should not go ahead and carry out our maximum program, we shall answer by pointing out how far the masses of the democratically-minded people still are from Socialism, how undeveloped class antagonisms still are, how unorganised the proletarians still are. Organise hundreds of thousands of workers all over Russia; enlist the sympathy of millions for our program! Try to do this without confining yourselves to high-sounding but hollow anarchist phrases—and you will see at once that in order to achieve this organisation, in order to spread this socialist enlightenment, we must achieve the fullest possible measure of democratic reforms.”
― Vladimir Lenin, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution

“Most of us have been deeply shaped by the false notion that in order for people to behave better they need to feel worse and be punished. In practice, we see that humans are, in fact, far more likely to change in desirable ways when they are more resourced, not less.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“It is important to center the needs of those most directly impacted by the harm in a situation. We also hold that recognizing and attending to the humanity of those who harm is a central aspect of transforming our families, communities, and society. Seeing and dignifying the healing needs of people who abuse also runs counter to the idea that some people "out there" are "monsters" who are expendable or need to be "weeded out". By standing for everyone's need for healing, we challenge the dehumanizing logic that is central to systems of oppression, domination, and abuse. By standing for everyone's need for healing, we maintain our commitment to a vision of true liberation.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement

“It is absolutely true that people who harm people were also harmed. I know people sometimes don't want to hear that. I know that makes people mad, people feel like that's an excuse, whatever. But I, with every fiber of my being, the both/and harm and survivorship really sits with me all the time. Cause there's not one person I've worked with who harmed other people that was not also deeply and profoundly harmed themselves in some other context. (Mariame Kaba)”
― Ejeris Dixon, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement