Quotes About Reform

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.

In one year, 1975, thirty states overhauled their rape laws to make them more equitable to victims. Between 1970, when the feminist movement first started to talk about rape, and 1979, when the militance had receded, every state in the union went through a serious reevaluation of its rape codes and made significant adjustments.

Since 1980, the rate of incarceration for women has risen more than 700 percent. The majority of these women are imprisoned for nonviolent offenses.

Sixty-five million Americans with a criminal record face a total of 45,000 collateral consequences that restrict everything from employment, professional licensing, child custody rights, housing, student aid, voting, and even the ability to visit an incarcerated loved one. Many of these restrictions are permanent, forever preventing those who've already served their time from reaching their potential in the workforce, as parents, and as productive citizens.

When I left the parole building that day, it was the first time in two decades that I was no longer in the clutches of the U.S. justice system.

The American Bar Association documented 45,000 legal sanctions and restrictions imposed upon people with criminal records, a near-impenetrable barrier denying access to employment, student loans, housing, public assistance, custody of your children, the right to vote—in many places, the formerly incarcerated are even blocked from visiting a loved one in prison.

Well, first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet, due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague, Olympia Snowe, but it's not there yet. It falls short.

Hillary Clinton's radical attempts at so-called reform of the nation's health care system would have been more destructive than even Obamacare has been.

I liked the so-called Volcker Rule. I would have separated investment banking and commercial, deposit banking, as we did under the Glass-Steagal Act. I would have brought back Glass-Steagal.

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.

There never was a social change in America without angry people at the heart.

Sometimes going to jail is just the price you have to pay for social reform or social change.

The Finance Ministry can bring about real social change.

Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.

We can't continue with this social democracy here in Brazil.

China is a developing country with a huge population, and also a developing country in a crucial stage of reform. In this context, China still faces many challenges in economic and social development. And a lot still needs to be done in China, in terms of human rights.

Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.

I do a number of things working on human rights issues, prison recidivism rates, and then I also push and have worked a lot on the social issues of rebuilding the family.

Kulanu is the only party actually championing social issues.

We have fought for social justice. We have fought for economic justice. We have fought for environmental justice. We have fought for criminal justice. Now we must add a new fight - the fight for electoral justice.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

I began to understand that not only was there was a social justice agenda, there was a policy agenda. For every justice campaign there was a policy initiative associated with it.

Do you know what social justice is? Do you know what social reform is? I didn't either, but reform and social justice are what I intend to do.