Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations on Reform

By continually scolding someone, they in time become accustomed to it and despise your reproof.
French Proverb

If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.
Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun

Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety the rich.
Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian

Many hope the tree may be felled that they may gather chips by the fall.
Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist

No one is to blame. It is neither their fault nor ours. It is the misfortune of being born when a whole world is dying.
Alexander Herzen (1812–70) Russian Revolutionary, Writer

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher

Private reproof is the best grave for private faults.
Common Proverb

The social order destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than that which immediately preceded it, and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) French Historian, Political Scientist

Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.
J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) British Biologist, Geneticist

When error is confuted, vice reproved, and hypocrisy exposed, some are sure to complain of uncourteousness, uncharitableness, and an unchristian spirit. Such men would have been loud in their complaints, and bitter in their censure, of the prophets and apostles, and would have doubted the personal piety, and ultimate salvation, of Luther, and Knox, and Whitefield.
Anonymous

How important, often, is the pain of guilt, as a stimulant to amendment and reformation.
John Foster Dulles (1888–1959) American Republican Public Official, Lawyer

There is a transcendent power in example. We reform others unconsciously, when we walk uprightly.
Sophie Swetchine (1782–1857) Russian Mystic, Writer

We are reformers in spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.
Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer

They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright

Charles Fox said that restorations were the most bloody of all revolutions; and he might have added that reformations are the best mode of preventing the necessity of either.
Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist

Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.
Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat

Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
Moliere (1622–73) French Playwright

It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.
Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author

Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little farther, and try to plant a virtue in its place, otherwise he will have his labor to renew; a strong soil that has produced weeds, may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist

Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.
Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist

Find fault when you must find fault in private, and if possible sometime after the offense, rather than at the time.
Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit

In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker

You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.
Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) British Suffragette Leader

I’m not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I’ve reached that state.
Charlie Munger (b.1924) American Investor, Philanthropist

Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth’s sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) American Novelist

He who reforms himself, has done more toward reforming the public, that a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots.
Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss Theologian, Poet

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher

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