Peter the Great
Tsar
"It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself."
Reform quotes
Reform
583 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Karl Marx
Philosopher, Economist
"Social reforms are never carried out by the weakness of the strong; but always by the strength of the weak."
Catherine the Great
Empress
"it is better to inspire a reform than to enforce it."
Theodore Roosevelt
Politician, Author
"Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe."
Lindsey Graham
Politician
"Social Security must be preserved and strengthened. But we need to be candid about the costs and willing to make the tough choices that real reform will require."
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Topics related to Reform
Browse quotes that often appear alongside reform — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Reform quotes (page 1 of 30)
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"Why is the tao so valuable? Because it is everywhere, and everyone can use it. This is why those who seek will find, And those who reform will be forgiven; Why the good will be rewarded, And the thief who is cunning will escape."
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"Reform is Chinas second revolution."
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"Vote against anything introduced with a "re" in it, especially reforms, reorganizations, and recodifications. This usually means going back to something that failed once and is likely to do so again."
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"Reform is a process, and not an event."
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"O Luther, you had 95 theses . . . The matter is far more terrible-there is only one thesis. The Christianity of the New Testament does not exist at all. Here there is nothing to reform."
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"But such IMF pressure is very much helpful for me to push such a, you know, reform. So in this sense I think IMF is very much helpful for alien society."
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"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."
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"Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery."
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"We must see the great distinction between a reform movement and a revolutionary movement. We are called upon to raise certain basic questions about the whole society . . . . What America must be told today is that she must be born again. The whole structure of American life must be changed."
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"Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place."
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"When aroused the American conscience is a powerful force for reform."
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"But I don't want massive layoffs of anyone - public or private. We are planning on shrinking government through attrition and reform, not through random pink slips."
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"Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man."
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"No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor and, instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal."
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"Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself."
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"Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage."
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"I have a message for the world, which I will deliver without fear and care for the future. To the reformers I will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform."
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"The best social reform program in the world is a job."
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"He who reforms himself, has done much toward reforming others; and one reason why the world is not reformed, is, because each would have others make a beginning, and never thinks of himself doing it."
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"The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people."
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