A Quote by Margaret Case Harriman

We were good reformers, but we weren't good enough. We elected a candidate and then, busy with our own affairs, we left him hanging in mid-air. Reformers are such part-time pillars of society!

Margaret Case Harriman

Quote Topics

Affairs Air Busy Candidate Elected Enough Good Good Enough Hanging Him Left Mid Our Own Part Part-Time Pillars Reformers Society Then Time Were

Quote Author

Margaret Case Harriman
Writer

The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot comprehend why those ways should not be good enough for everybody; and what is more, spontaneity forms no part of the ideal of the majority of moral and social reformers, but is rather looked on with jealousy, as a troublesome and perhaps rebellious obstruction to the general acceptance of what these reformers, in their own judgment, think would be best for mankind.

John Stuart Mill

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

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

Honduras in 2009 and Paraguay in 2012 were low-hanging fruit, small countries with outsized oligarchies, where mild reformers were easily dispatched.

Greg Grandin

Some of the greatest social reformers of our time were wealthy.

Jerry Rubin

During a political campaign everyone is concerned with what a candidate will do on this or that question if he is elected except the candidate; he's too busy wondering what he'll do if he isn't elected.

Everett Dirksen

There is one Islam, unreformed, but three sets of Muslims. Medina, Mecca, and. Dissidents, reformers, whatever you want to call them. The first group are the extremists and fundamentalists, the second the great mass of Muslims who just want to live their lives in peace, and the third are reformers.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Upbeat is for people who want to feel good about their cause: the reformers, the progressives, the revolutionaries, the utopians, the collectivists, and the rest of the altruistic scum of the earth. Why do these people want to feel good? They want to feel good in order to convince themselves that they are good.

P. J. O'Rourke

I left my fingerprints somewhere - that's good enough. I am my own person - that's good enough. I stand my ground - that's good enough.

Steven Morrissey

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart.

Jack Kornfield

As long as white newspapers were unwilling or unable to attack 'anti-Negro' forces or to air the views of black reformers, there was a service black newspapers could provide.

Darryl Pinckney

She wondered why they didn't understand that their true selfs were good enough, and if they weren't, then the someones they weren't good enough for, were really the ones not good enough.

Lynsay Sands

And if you look at society, the way it works, they are creating, from cradle to grave, left-brain prisoners. To advance in this society, you have to be good at passing exams in school, which are taking in left-brain information overwhelmingly. Then you go to the next level, and so on so that by the time you reach any level of significant influence in society or the institutions of society, you are fundamentally locked into your left brain. Or at least the majority of people are.

David Icke

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

Historically, individuals possessed of the confidence that privilege and good fortune bestow have often proved conspicuous reformers: think only of Franklin D. Roosevelt.