Reformers Quotes:

The Reformer is always right about what's wrong. However, he's often wrong about what is right.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

topic: Reformers

The taxing power is especially something after which the reformer's finger always itches.

- William Graham Sumner

source: William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.100, Ludwig von Mises Institute

topic: Fingers, Reformers

It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.

- Edward Gibbon

source: Edward Gibbon (1860). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.351

topic: Firsts, Care, Reformers

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.

- Logan Pearsall Smith

topic: House, Pay, Social, Hypocrit, Reformers

What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

topic: Lying, Men, Justice, Reformers

The fewer the words, the better the prayer.

- Martin Luther

topic: Softball, Christian, Prayer, Brevity, Reformers

[Reformers] might be classified as a distinct species having eyes in the back of their heads.

- Ellen Glasgow

topic: Eye, Reform, Might, Reformers

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power.

- Thomas Aquinas

source: St Thomas Aquinas (2013). “Summa Theologica, Volume 1”, p.466, Cosimo, Inc.

topic: Sex, Powerful, Perfect, Women Bashing, Defective

It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution.

- Mahatma Gandhi

source: Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.81, Courier Corporation

topic: Fear, Atheism, Reform, Abhorrence, Reformers

Scholars are those who have read in books, but thinkers, men of genius, world-enlighteners, and reformers of the human race are those who have read directly in the book of the world.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

source: Arthur Schopenhauer, E. F. J. Payne (1974). “Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays”, p.492, Oxford University Press

topic: Book, Men, Race, Reformers

PANDEMONIUM, n. Literally, the Place of All the Demons. Most of them have escaped into politics and finance, and the place is now used as a lecture hall by the Audible Reformer.

- Ambrose Bierce

source: Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2476, Delphi Classics

topic: Politics, Lectures, Finance, Pandemonium, Reformers

I own I never really warmed To the reformer or reformed. And yet conversion has its place Not halfway down the scale of grace.

- Robert Frost

source: Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

topic: Grace, Reform, Scales, Reformers

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

topic: Movement, Revolutionary, Stage, Reformers

This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer.

- Leo Tolstoy

topic: Culture, Motive, Conditions, Reformers

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

source: "Perry drops out, endorses Gingrich" by Peter Hamby, www.cnn.com. January 19, 2012.

topic: Heart, Movement, Conservative, Reformers

We are reformers in the spring and summer, but in autumn we stand by the old. Reformers in the morning, and conservers at night.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

topic: Summer, Morning, Spring, Summer To Fall, Reformers

As a reformer the liberal is dissatisfied with things as they are because they violate his exceptionally tender conscience.... Liberalism does not advocate change for its own sake, but for the sake of something better in the direction of what he regards as good, namely, the maximum of liberty consistent with a regard for all men and all interests -- the general happiness based on peace and justice.

- Ralph Barton Perry

topic: Men, Justice, Liberty, Reformers

The reformers' preferred metaphor is "leveling the playing field." They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers.

- George Will

source: George F. Will (2003). “With a Happy Eye, But...: America and the World, 1997--2002”, p.282, Simon and Schuster

topic: Fields, Logic, Language, Reformers, Bulldozers

What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw. The only protection against misguided zeal is constant alertness to infractions of the guarantees of liberty contained in our Constitution. Each surrender of liberty to the demands of the moment makes easier another, larger surrender. . .

- William O. Douglas

topic: Liberty, Doe, Guarantees, Alertness, Reformers

I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes

- George Soros

source: George Soros (2003). “The Alchemy of Finance”, p.372, John Wiley & Sons

topic: Kind, Economic, Keynes, Reformers

In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history.

- Frank Herbert

source: Frank Herbert (1987). “Heretics of Dune”, p.89, Penguin

topic: Misery, Force, Humans, Reformers

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing.

- Nicholas Lemann

topic: School, Government, Skills, Reformers, Government Politics

The modification of prejudice takes a long time, and occurs as the result of a thousand things that happen to the prejudiced person - things he sees and hears and reads, people he talks to, and places he visits. Any given reformer must be content to take a small and obscure place in a chain of cumulative pressures.

- Margaret Halsey

topic: Long, People, Prejudice, Modification, Reformers

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (1873). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.146

topic: Jesus, Radicalism, Christ, Reformers

Many modern (so-called) Reformers are just as dangerous as the physician who makes a wrong diagnosis of a disease. They see the trouble from without and prescribe external remedies, while the cause of the trouble is within and needs internal treatment.

- William J. H. Boetcker

topic: Needs, Disease, Diagnosis, Reformers

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

- Lydia M. Child

topic: Defeat, Reformers

They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

- Aleister Crowley

source: "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley". Book by Aleister Crowley. Chapter 57, 1969.

topic: Passion, Patriotic, Storm, Moral Indignation, Christ Like

Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?"

- Swami Vivekananda

source: Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1354, Manonmani Publishers

topic: Brother, Idol Worship, Helping, Reformers

Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. To say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.

- Barack Obama

topic: Religious, Kings, Men, Policy Debate, Reformers

I have a message for the world, which I will deliver without fear and care for the future. To the reformers I will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform.

- Swami Vivekananda

topic: Roots, Care, Branches, Reformers, Roots And Branches

None but praying leaders can have praying followers. A praying pulpit will beget praying pews. We do greatly need pastors and evangelists who will set the saints to this business of praying. We are not a generation of praying saints. Who will restore this breach? The greatest will he be of reformers who can set the Church to praying.

- Edward McKendree Bounds

topic: Motivation, Inspiration, Leader, Evangelists, Reformers

Antonio Gramsci said that social reformers should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This means that one must have the intellectual ability to see how bad things are and the emotional ability to look forward with hope. It's a hard combination to sustain, but if you can do it, you can change the world.

- Andrew Solomon

topic: Mean, Emotional, Should Have, Antonio, Reformers

The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.

- James Russell Lowell

topic: Hypocrisy, Devil, Intolerance, Devil Love, Reformers

The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.

- Learned Hand

topic: Confusion, Voting, Apathy, Reformers

Americans have gotten to know Sarah Palin. They know that she's a role model to women and other - and reformers all over America. She's a reformer.

- John McCain

topic: America, Role Models, Roles, Reformers

I knew Deng Xiaoping when he came out of prison. He had, after all, been imprisoned for nearly ten years by Mao. I know what China looked like before he took over, and so in my own mind, I don't think of Deng Xiaoping as an oppressor. I think of somebody who, faced with that crisis, made a very painful and decision with which I cannot agree. But I also think of him as a great reformer.

- Henry A. Kissinger

source: Source: www.pbs.org

topic: Thinking, Years, Decision, Reformers

I'm no reformer; for I see more lightThan darkness in the world; mine eyes are quickTo catch the first dim radiance of the dawn,And slow to note the cloud that threatens storm.

- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

topic: Eye, Clouds, Darkness, Reformers

Over all life broods Poesy, like the calm blue sky with its motherly, rebuking face. She is the great reformer, and where the love of her is strong and healthy, wickedness and wrong cannot long prevail.

- James Russell Lowell

topic: Strong, Blue, Sky, Motherly, Reformers

Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.

- Emma Goldman

source: Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.100, 谷月社

topic: Inferiority, Economic, Social, Reformers

The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.

- Agnes Repplier

topic: Simple, Thinking, Personality, Disinterested, Reformers

The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organization do not permit them to act.

- Florence Nightingale

topic: Organization, World, Permit, Reformers

What is man born for but to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made? A renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good? Imitating that great Nature which embossoms us all, and which sleeps no moment on an old past, but every hour repairs herself, yielding us every morning a new day, with every breath a new life?

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1909). “Essays and English Traits”

topic: Leadership, Courage, Morning, Imitating, Reformers

It generally troubles them [the reformers] not a whit that their remedy implies a complete reconstruction of society, or even a reconstitution of human nature.

- William Graham Sumner

topic: Human Nature, Trouble, Reconstruction, Reformers

Inequality provokes a generalized anger that finds targets where it can--immigrants, foreign countries, American elites, government in all forms--and it rewards demagogues while discrediting reformers.

- George Packer

topic: Country, Government, Class, Reformers

Living more lives than one, knowing people of all classes, all shades of opinion, monarchists, republicans, socialists, anarchists, has had a salutary effect on my mind. If every year of my life, every month of the year, I had lived with reformers and crusaders I should be, by this time, a fanatic. As it is I have had such varied things to do, I have had so many different contacts that I am not even very much of a crank.

- Rheta Childe Dorr

topic: Years, Class, Knowing, Months Of The Year, Reformers

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

topic: Maturity, Light, Roots, Antithesis, Caleb

Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!

- Honore de Balzac

topic: Writing, Style, Thieves, Reformers

So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating God.

- Charles Kingsley

topic: Creating, Giving, Miracle, Reformers, Telegraph

It is not envy or malice, as so many people think, but utter despair that has persuaded many educational reformers to recommend the abolition of the English public schools.

- Peter Medawar

topic: Educational, School, Thinking, Public School, Reformers

In every community there are little knots of fantastic extremists who loudly proclaim that they are striving for righteousness, and who, in reality, do their feeble best for unrighteousness. Just as the upright politician should hold in peculiar scorn the man who makes the name of politician a reproach and a shame, so the genuine reformer should realize that the cause he champions is especially jeopardized by the mock reformer who does what he can to make reform a laughingstock among decent men.

- Theodore Roosevelt

source: Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”, p.22, Courier Corporation

topic: Reality, Men, Names, Extremism, Decent Man

The great mistake of the reformers is to believe that life begins and ends with health, and that happiness begins and ends with a full stomach and the power to enjoy physical pleasures, even of the finer kind.

- Katharine Fullerton Gerould

topic: Mistake, Believe, Kind, Reformers