Quotes About Reform

Mr. Deacon, on the other hand, was in favour of abolishing, or ignoring, the existing world entirely, with a view to experimenting with one of an entirely different order. He was a student of Esperanto (or, possibly, one of the lesser-known artificial languages), intermittently vegetarian, and an advocate of decimal coinage.

In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave decorum and laborious argument. An age was occupied in proving a grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages, which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read. We get on now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true sorrows

Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a faineant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

Who doubts that? How many very bad things are there that we do! But if we were to attempt to reform all our bad ways at once, we should never do any good thing. I am not strong enough to put the world straight, and I doubt if you are." Such

So also to Sir Robert Peel was Catholic Emancipation horrible, so was Reform of Parliament, so was the Corn Law Repeal. They were horrible to him, horrible to be thought of, horrible to be expressed. But the people required these measures, and therefore he carried them, arguing on their behalf with all the astuteness of a practised statesman.

Peel was certainly no Judas: he was a man of honest conviction who had honestly changed his mind and had the courage to say so. Nevertheless, the slur would affect his standing in the Tory Party and the next great campaign for Reform.

Suppose, in their altruistic passion for justice and order, they had determined to reform the world, but had not realized that they were destroying the soul of man?

Often we had no choice: we couldn't reform the whole world. And didn't somebody once say 'Politics is the art of the possible'?" "Quite true—which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.

And you want to 'reform' people like that when dynamite is so cheap?

One or two of these scoundrel statesmen should be shot once a-year, just to keep the others on their good behavior.

Ninety percent of all prisoners in all jails get out some day. So why not give them a little levity in what's otherwise a very dark life?

Reduce the influence of religion upon your life.

We can only change life in the country and radically reform society by having God's wisdom, strength and authority

Yes, I do agree we need health care reform however, this bill badly misses the mark. Congress can and must do better for the American people.

Bringing Leviathan under control will be the heart of global politics because of a confluence of three forces: failure, competition, and opportunity. The West has to change because it is going broke. The emerging world needs to reform to keep forging ahead. There is a global contest, but one based on promise as much as fear: Government can be done better.

without serious reforms of its public sector America will turn into "an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army,"11 with all the money going to entitlements and defense and none left for education or anything else.

Of all persecuted sects, the Baptists stand forth as most prominent, simply and only because they aim at a more complete and thorough reform than any others ever attempted. They teach that Christ's kingdom is not of this world; that the church is not a national, political, or provincial establishment; but a congregation of holy men, separated from the world by the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, it's easy to be overly optimistic when it comes to Egyptian reform. The country has a history of false promises and backtracking dating to the 1970s.

The bitter irony of the story told here is that in 1990, no Islamic society on earth was better positioned to reject jihad and realize a modern, reformed version of Islam than Bosnia.

Salinas proposed an overhaul of Article 27 to pave the way for U.S. agribusiness to buy up the Mexican countryside.

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

Unless biblical literalism is challenged overtly in the Christian church itself, it will, in my opinion, kill the Christian faith.

In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away.