Quotes About Reform

We need first of all the reform of our justice system. We need reform of the education system, because of quality of education because of innovation and technology. And we need administrative reform. Too much bureaucracy.

'Reform' is a word you always aughta' watch out for. 'Reform' is a change that you're supposed to like. And watch it - As soon as you hear the word 'Reform', you should reach for your wallet and see who's lifting it.

We're trying our best to develop sort of strategies. We have already turned into law a labor reform law that will allow for more opportunities to ensue. We have also established a permits law that will facilitate permits in Puerto Rico. We are about to roll out a comprehensive tax reform that will enhance the base and will reduce the rates in Puerto Rico.

The church is always trying to get other people to reform, it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example

I don't know who had the training of you," he continued doggedly, "but your morals are shocking. You spent a night in my bed, remember, after a night in a bawdy house. You go about collecting street urchins and letting inebriated vagabonds kiss you, and then you get into brawls in pawnshops. You are probably past all redemption, but I'm going to reform you anyhow. If you behave yourself, perhaps I'll let you reform me on occasion, but I make no promises.

I'm in favor of doing tax reform, but I think tax reform ought to be revenue neutral as it was back during the [Ronald] Reagan years. We've resolved this issue.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions.

I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

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

The extremely low respect Congress enjoys among the population indicates that the citizens understand broadly what's going on. But the lack of a realistic political reform path leads to apathy and the kind of mindless frustration that manifests itself in the Tea Party-style hatred of any and all government.

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

I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.

I've decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can stand up there and resist it.

I am very happy. Extremely, blissfully so. Even in my pain, I'm happy. I like crying. It makes me feel alive. Challenges, when you're in a tumultuous situation, are an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to get closer to God, an opportunity to find and kind of reform yourself, and to figure out what really matters and what your priorities are. Not that I'm welcoming tribulation, but I find that it is beneficial.

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.

We cut tax exemptions in 1986, it was the most admired tax reform in U.S. history. Congress and the president worked together then to eliminate scores of loopholes and exemptions and deductions; this made taxes much simpler, and allowed a major cut in tax rates.

Marco Rubio, I think, will be president some day. Whether 2016 is his time, time will tell. He embraced immigration reform. He seems to have backed off. I'll let him explain why.

I admired the way McCain worked on campaign finance reform. I admired the way Nancy Pelosi stiffened the Democrats' spine during the health care debate. I admire the way Barack Obama has raised a dog in the White House without ever putting it on the roof of the car for a vacation drive.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation.

When you have a 12-minute debate over whether lipstick on a pig refers to a demeaning comment about the vice presidential candidate, you know we're not talking about health reform, we're not talking about energy policy, we're not talking about balancing the budget. And you know, it's fairly stupid.

The other thing that really I regretted not being able to do was to push effectively for the reform of the Security Council. Because the world was changing, and is changing very fast, and I felt the UN was holding on to old arrangements. Most governments felt that it has such a narrow power base, based on the results of the second world war.

A man who marries a woman to educate her falls victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.

To restore the trust of the people, we must reform the way the government operates.

there can be neither politically nor morally a good which is not universal ... we cannot reform for a time or for a class, but for all and for the whole, and our very interests will draw us together in one wide bond of sympathy.

I welcome the Democrats' ideas on Social Security. I think it is very important to make a bipartisan reform.

The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.

History shows that there is no more potent engine for reform than the passion of voters who feel betrayed by the politicians they hoped would do the right thing.

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.

If there were two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, who each committed to the same kind of fundamental reform, then the election would be an election between the vice presidential candidates. It'd be just like the regular election, except it would be one step down.

In reality, we've had more spending, more bureaucracy, more waste and higher costs but without necessary reform nor rising productivity.

He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state and wishes to have it accepted, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.

There was a whole group that really welcomed me: George Mitchell was one, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd, the reformers were really delighted to see me. So if you were one of those squeaky clean, shiny bright, let's reform the world, you were very glad to see Barb Mikulski, and George Mitchell was in that category.

Do not spill thy soul in running hither and yon, grieving over the mistakes and the vices of others. The one person whom it is most necessary to reform is yourself.

To err and not reform, this may indeed be called error.

I've seen how the left has used it to accuse opponents of their version of reform of being bigots and racists.

To reform society, and with it humanity, there is only one mean; to transform the mentality of men, to direct them ("les orienter", Fr.) in a new spirit.

Bentham spent much of his life writing constitutions and proposing legal reform in the light of his utilitarianism. The evaluation of particular acts was hardly his concern. The psychology of his day was hedonistic and he worked in that framework and passed it on to Mill, but it is clear as day that Mill was not a hedonist in the sense in which we use that term today, though he used the language of pleasure and pain to express his views.

There is a cultural norm on the left of being afraid to declare victory, which is related to the binary of reform/revolution. Whereas reformists are winning small gains, revolutionaries don't want people to be satisfied with those small victories because they worry this will lead to acceptance of the bigger picture of capitalism domination, and so they find a way to turn every victory into a defeat. In the book, I call for a culture of declaring victory wherever we can.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

Self-reform is the only kind that works.

From the very beginning, I said there are two tracks of reform: there's the political and the technical. I don't believe the political will be successful, for exactly the reasons you underlined. The issue is too abstract for average people, who have too many things going on in their lives.

The Liberal Party abandoned the principles of reform and social liberalism and has become, instead, just another piece of political machinery in the service of corporatism.

For a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived. Did I reform, you ask? No. I'm not ashamed anymore.

Those outside of autism need to understand this is an epidemic and we need more government funding, insurance coverage and education reform.

Health care is a far more serious, immediate and destructive problem than social security. . . . The upfront investment needed to fund system wide [health care] reform . . . would be far offset by the savings.

Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.