Top 131 Reformers Quotes & Sayings

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I.

Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.

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

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

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.

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

conceit is the devil's horse, and reformers generally ride it when they are in a hurry.

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!

It is one of the consolations of middle aged reformers that the good that they inculcate must live after them if it is to live at all.

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.

The devil loves nothing better than the intolerance of reformers.

Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.

Criminal justice reformers prattle on about 'over-incarceration' in America when in fact our nation suffers from an under-incarceration problem.

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.

It is often said by reformers that government should be conducted upon business principles.

Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place.

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

Drug reformers get seduced by politicians who co-opt our language but who make no meaningful change. And when we don't hold politicians accountable, we contribute to harm.

It is one of the ironies of history that reformers so often misjudge the consequences of their reforms.

Most reformers wore rubber boots and stood on glass when God sent a current of Commonsense through the Universe.

A failed Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and extremists. It will embolden those who are trying to thwart the ambitions of reformers.

Electing radical reformers as district attorneys is huge. It's essential.

The strategic objective is to help Iraq government succeed.That's the strategic and not only to help the government the reformers in Iraq succeed, but to help the reformers across the region succeed to fight off the elements of extremism.

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

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!

Missing from the national conversation are voices of pro-immigration reformers and civil rights leaders, who can speak on behalf of those who have no voice.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

Bipartisan reformers have long recognized that earmarks make way for corruption.

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.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

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

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

Public reformers had need first practice on their own hearts that which they purpose to try on others.

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

There is a growing acceptance and interest in publicly funded school choice as a catalyst for education reform in general and a way to empower parents to be education 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.

The West is pathetically naive about Russian reformers. We long to believe they are real liberals, but no liberal will ever rule Russia.

I believe we owe it to our children and grandchildren to stay engaged and to help spread liberty and to help reformers.

The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and revolutionists are indispensable to counterbalance the inertia and fossilism marking so large a part of human institutions.

...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but ratherintellectual biologists and psychologists.

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their conscience also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part, and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

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.

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.

Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals.

The renaissance movement and social reformers have taught us that superstitious beliefs and customs should be challenged and opposed.

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.

The epoch of individuality is concluded, and it is the duty of reformers to initiate the epoch of association. Collective man is omnipotent upon the earth he treads.

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

By resisting almost any change aimed at improving our public schools, teachers' unions have become a ripe target for reformers across the ideological spectrum.

As a matter of fact, it's in our interests that we help reformers across the Middle East achieve their objectives. This is the fundamental challenge of the 21st century.

We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.

Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.

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.

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

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the world over, living on anticipation.

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.

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

X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.