Quotes About Reformers

But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you—the social reformers—see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.

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.

It was the ideas of the classical economists that removed the checks imposed by age-old laws, customs, and prejudices upon technological improvement and freed the genius of reformers and innovators from the straitjackets) of the guilds, government tutelage, and social pressure of various kinds. It was they that reduced the prestige of conquerors and expropriators and demonstrated the social benefits derived from business activity.

Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. The diagnosis is wrong, and the solutions of the corporate reformers are wrong. Our urban schools are in trouble because of concentrated poverty and racial segregation. But public education is not 'broken.' Public education is in a crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has destabilized it.

The name which I have selected will prepare the reader to expect no new doctrines in this volume. It is simple, unadulterated, old-fashioned Evangelical theology. It contains nothing but the "Old Paths" in which the Apostolic Christians, the Reformers, the best English Churchmen for the last three hundred years, and the best Evangelical Christians of the present day, have persistently walked.

For some reason, America produced an inexhaustible supply of sanctimonious killjoys endlessly crusading to improve everyone else's life.

I know that the Reformers spoke of the sacraments as "visible words," but this was an unfortunate choice of words. The Lord's Supper is not a visible word but an edible one. Baptism is not a visible word but a tangible one. The only "visible words" are human beings, the images of God made after the likeness of the Word of God Himself. In other words, the only thing to look at in worship is other people.

Unlike other reformers, Luther rarely claimed divine inspiration for his ideas. It is interesting too that he uses the word Kunst—art—for it suggests that the insight, like the skill of a craftsman or artist, opened up a whole new ability to accomplish things in a different way.

It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers from crushing the group at the other end of the political spectrum.

Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

Spener, along with later pietists and evangelicals, also regarded the sacraments more as occasions for fresh experiences of God within the heart than as the objective offering of grace, which had been the view of the major reformers.

Unlike all earlier Roman reformers, Gaius sponsored not just a single initiative but a dozen or so. He was the first politician in the city, leaving aside the mythical founding fathers, to have an extensive and coherent programme, with measures that covered such things as the right of appeal against the death penalty, the outlawing of bribery and a much more ambitious scheme of land distribution than Tiberius had ever proposed.

John Stuart Mill was called a Ricardian socialist because classical economists were moving toward reforms they themselves characterized as social – and hence, as socialist. Most reformers referred to themselves as socialists of one kind or another, from Christian socialists to Marxist socialists and reformers across the political spectrum. The question was what kind of socialism "free market" capitalism would evolve into.

Economics ultimately is political economy. To claim that it is "disinterested" and scientific is to cover up its political motives. The entire history of political economy has centered on the conflict between reformers seeking to free society from rentiers – landlords, creditors and monopolists – and the reaction by these wealthy vested interests to maintain their grip on the status quo that favors them.

The spirit of the Reformation was already abroad. Instinctive reformers, angry men, muttered so loudly that their words became audible.

Many an act that man does is right or wrong according to the time and place which form, so to speak, its context; strip it of its surrounding circumstances, and you tear away its meaning. Gentlemen reformers, beware of this common practice of yours! Beware of calling an act evil on Tuesday because that same act was evil on Monday!

Most ardent reformers are accompanied by but equal portion of dullness . John Quincy Adams