A reformer is a guy who rides through the sewer in a glass bottom boat.
A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.
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.
Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself.
Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age.
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, which will itself need reforming.
Experience has two things to teach. The first is that we must correct a great deal and the second, that we must not correct too much.
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology.
I think I am better than the people who are trying to reform me.
If it was not absolutely necessary, it was the foolishest thing ever done.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
People who have reformed themselves has contributed their full share towards the reformation of their neighbor.
People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this, — that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.
Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation.