quotations about reform
Never came reformation in a flood.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry V
Reform therefore, without bravery, or scandal of former times and persons; but yet set it down to thyself, as well to create good precedents, as to follow them.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Great Place", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Reform is a good, replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come; therefore it has been thought expedient for all administrations which have been, or that will be, but by any particular one which is, it is considered, like Scotch grapes, to be very seldom ripe, and by the time it is so, to be quite out of season.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
But 'tis the talent of our English nation,
Still to be plotting some new reformation.
JOHN DRYDEN
prologue, Sophonisba
It is well-known what strange work there has been in the world under the name and pretense of reformation; how often it has turned out to be, in reality, deformation; or at best, a tinkering sort of business, where while one hole has been mended two have been made.
G. HORNE
attributed, Day's Collacon
All reforms are matters of the moment; fruit of any kind plucked and eaten before ripe is sure to have unpleasant effects on all sorts of stomachs, political as well as physical.
R. M. WALSH
"Lord Palmerston", Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, February 1871
Leaders do not conform; they reform. If you conform, you are nurturing mediocrity. If you reform, you are breeding change.
ISRAELMORE AYIVOR
Leaders' Ladder
Public reformers had need first practice on their own hearts that which they propose to try on others.
KING CHARLES I
attributed, Day's Collacon
We talk much of reform, meaning thereby a change of mud in our mud-bath.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Every reform was once a private opinion.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Essays
Contemporary man has begun to lose his naiveté as ... the deep causes of the situation in which he finds himself are becoming clearer. He realizes that to attack these deep causes is the indispensable prerequisite for radical change. And so he has gradually abandoned a simple reformist attitude regarding the existing social order, for, by its very shallowness this reformism perpetuates the existing system.
GUSTAVO GUTIÉRREZ
A Theology of Liberation
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.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Unless the reformer can invent something which substitutes attractive virtues for attractive vices, he will fail.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
Reform is not an idea we implement; rather reform is something produced by the interactions between groups, which comes to have meaning through interpretations of social institutions.
DAN A. LEWIS & JANE A. GRANT
The Social Construction of Reform
Nothing helps a man to reform like thinking of the past with regret.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Idiot
The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
RUSSELL KIRK
The Roots of American Order
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry IV, Part I
The greatest reformation should be among those who have been the greatest sinners.
JOSEPH ADDISON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
On the Campaign for Divorce Law Reform, 1860
As with almost every reform that I have ever undertaken, most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd slander. Our opponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our methods, acts, and personalities.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
An Autobiography