Quotes about Reform

They are like those sacred cows in India which, I am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets... Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat - and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation. ...on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering... If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought-imitation...

~ Shaykh Mustafa al-Maraghi, Quoted by Muhammad Asad in The Road To Mecca

In the future, judges will send criminals to holy spots where reverence-provoking beauty will overwhelm their addiction to hatred.

One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

Resistance to something was the law of New England nature; the boy looked out on the world with the instinct of resistance; numberless generations his predecessors had viewed the world chiefly as a thing to be reformed, filled with evil forces to be abolished, and they saw no reason to suppose that they had wholly succeeded in the abolition; the duty was unchanged. That duty implied not only resistance to evil, but hatred of it. Boys naturally look on all force as an enemy, and generally find it so, but the New Englander, whether boy or man, in his long struggle with a stingy or hostile universe, had learned also to love the pleasure of hating.
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

The Art of Happiness There was never a time when so much official effort was being expended to produce happiness, and probably never a time when so little attention was paid by the individual to creating and personal qualities that make for it. What one misses most today is the evidence of widespread personal determination to develop a character that will, in itself, given any reasonable odds, make for happiness. Our whole emphasis is on the reform of living conditions, of increased wages, of controls on the economic structure-the government approach-and so little on man improving himself. The ingredients of happiness are so simple that they can be counted on one hand. Happiness comes from within, and rests most securely on simple goodness and clear conscience. Religion may not be essential to it, but no one ins known to have gained it without a philosophy resting on ethical principles. Selfishness is its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one's self. It is quiet, seldom found for long in crowds, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It cannot be bought; indeed, money has very little to do with it. No one is happy unless he is reasonably well satisfied with himself, so that the quest for tranquility must of necessity begin with self-examination. We shall not often be content with what we discover in this scrutiny. There is much to do, and so little done. Upon this searching self-analysis, however, depends the discovery of those qualities that make each man unique, and whose development alone can bring satisfaction. Of all those who have tried, down the ages, to outline a program for happiness, few have succeeded so well as William Henry Channing, chaplain of the House of Representatives in the middle of the last century: "To live content with small means; so seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy . . . to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to the stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; in a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common." It will be noted that no government can do this for you; you must do it for yourself.

Banking and after-dinner speaking are two of the most nonessential industries we have in this country. I am ready to reform, if they are.

Campaign finance reform is a joke. The only reason people give politicians money is so they can gain their favor to steal my money. Campaign finance reform wouldn't be needed if politicians quit enriching one group at the expense of another.

To reform a man you must begin with his grandmother.

A fellow who's planning to reform is one step behind - he ought to quit planning and get on with the job.

It is always easy to reform the city if you live in the country.

The lunatic fringe in all reform movements.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations . . . can never effect a reform.

I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that you have created your image in me, so that I may remember you, think of you, love you. But this image is so obliterated and worn away by wickedness, it is so obscured by the smoke of sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do, unless you renew and reform it. I am not attempting, O Lord, to penetrate your loftiness, for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it, but I desire in some measure to understand your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this too I believe, that "unless I believe, I shall not understand." (Isaiah 7:9)

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

I like business because it is competitive, because it rewards deeds rather than words. I like business because it compels earnestness and does not permit me to neglect today's task while thinking about tomorrow. I like business because it undertakes to please, not reform; because it is honestly selfish, thereby avoiding hypocrisy and sentimentality. I like business because it promptly penalizes mistakes, shiftlessness and inefficiency, while rewarding well those who give it the best they have in them. Lastly, I like business because each day is a fresh adventure.

The only way a woman can ever reform her husband is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate for virtue.

You do not reform a world by ignoring it.

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.

Letters are useful as a means of expressing the ideal self. . . . In letters we can reform without practice, beg without humiliation, snip and shape embarrassing experiences to the measure of our own desires. . . .

It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can't.

Some often repent, yet never reform; they resemble a man traveling in a dangerous path, who frequently starts and stops, but never turns back.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress.

Personal magnetism is a mixture of rugged Honesty, pulsating Energy, and self-organized Intelligence. I believe, absolutely, that truth is the strongest and most powerful weapon a man can use, whether he is fighting for a reform or fighting for a sale.

Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before.