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
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
Private reproof is the best grave for private faults.
—Common Proverb
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
Rebuke with soft words and hard arguments.
—Common Proverb
With children use force with men reason; such is the natural order of things. The wise man requires no law.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American Civil Rights Leader
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
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 Scientist, Geneticist
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
Public reformers had need first practice on their own hearts that which they propose to try on others.
—Charles I of England (1600–49) English King, Ruler
Long is the way and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
—John Milton (1608–74) English Poet, Civil Servant, Scholar, Debater
Necessity reforms the poor, and satiety the rich.
—Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian
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
Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility.
—Rebecca West (1892–1983) English Author, Journalist, Literary Critic
If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
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
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
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
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
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
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Some who will not speak against another, in the end does them harm.
—Common Proverb
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
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
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
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
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