Quotes About Reform

I wish that the Democrats would put some effort into Social Security reform, illegal immigration's reform, tax reform, or some of the other real issues that are out there.

I'm not optimistic about reform in many, if any, policy areas at all. I think we'll make further progress by inventing new things that aren't much regulated yet and outracing bad policy. I look at so many policy areas - regulation, regulatory reform, health care reform - it's all failing, we're not making improvements, we're going backwards.

My administration's policies on regulatory reform, tax reform, trade policies, will return significant manufacturing jobs to our country.

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 feel like it had an impact, in that it started the attention that has been paid to what was happening. It started to get us into this whole conversation about prison reform, the whole bipartisan dialogue that's been happening over the past five, six years about this, where you have a Van Jones and a Newt Gingrich, and you have the Rick Perrys and so forth getting up and talking about the need to reform.

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.

Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.

Those who oppose reform will also tell you that under our plan, you won't get to choose your doctor - that some bureaucrat will choose for you. That's also not true.

Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

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.

He that rectifies a crooked stick bends it the contrary way, so must he that would reform a vice learn to affect its mere contrary, and in time he shall see the springing blossoms of a happy restoration.

The careful reader of the New Testament will find three Christs described: - One who wished to preserve Judaism - one who wished to reform it, and one who built a system of his own

When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.

The budget caps were busted, mightily so. And we are reviewing with people like Judd Gregg from New Hampshire and others some budgetary reform measures that will reinstate - you know, possibly reinstate budgetary discipline. But the caps no longer - the caps, I guess they're there. But they didn't mean much.

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.

The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.

I support lowering the level of legal immigration by a moderate amount at this time. Legal immigration reform must be based upon principles that are pro-family, pro-work, and pro-naturalization, retaining opportunities for family reunification as the levels are lowered. We must not let this issue become divisive in this country.

One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a soundcurrency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.

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

Then by the springtime, you'll see us moving an effort to cut taxes for working families, small businesses and family farms to reform our business taxes in this country so that American businesses can compete more effectively with businesses around the world.

People expect those in authority to take on big problems and to solve them. We had an opportunity to reform Social Security in a way that would have protected people's benefits and created a solvent system. Younger workers would be confident that the money they were putting into the system would be available to them when they retired. It was a missed opportunity. I regret that.

We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.

America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration 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.

...I have had such a sickening of men in masses, and of causes, that I would not cross this room to reform parliament or prevent the union or to bring about the millennium. I speak only for myself, mind - it is my own truth alone - but man as part of a movement or a crowd is indifferent to me. He is inhuman. And I have nothing to do with nations, or nationalism. The only feelings I have - for what they are - are for men as individuals; my loyalties, such as they may be, are to private persons alone.

When we approach legal reform work, we can ask questions like: Will this provide actual relief to people facing violence or harm or will it primarily be a symbolic change? Will this divide our constituency by offering relief only to people with certain privileged statuses (such as people with lawful immigration status, people with jobs, married people, etc.)?

You know, people like Hillary Clinton think you grow the economy by growing Washington. I think most of us in America understand that people, not the government creates jobs. And one of the best things we can do is get the government out of the way, put in reign in all the out of control regulations, put in place and all of the above energy policy, give people the education, the skills that the need to succeed, and lower the tax rate and reform the tax code.

Successful health reform must not just make health insurance affordable, affordable health insurance has to make health care affordable.

Its time to stop defending a system that is clearly in dire need of reform, stop issuing reports and setting up new roadblocks, and start providing Americans with prescription drugs that are both safe and affordable.

Too many of our children cannot read. Reading is the building block, and it must be the foundation for education reform.

It's not enough to be famous. You have to be professional enough to make reform.

People need to get involved in their neighborhood groups and the many housing reform groups that are out there. We need to hold our elected officials accountable and push them to create legislation that protects tenants and keeps people in their homes. Our governments - local, state and federal - also need to allocate resources to enforce the fair housing laws that are already on the books.

We see considerable strain in Russia, and that's obviously a matter of concern to us. It's in the very strong self-interest of Russia to continue on the reform path.

The promise of education reform can never be fulfilled without adequate funding, and by shortchanging our schools, President Bush is breaking his promise to our children.

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, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

True repentance also involves reform.

The government is determined to continue the process of fiscal consolidation and structural reform in order to secure sound public finances and improve the country's international competitiveness.

To reform means to shatter one form and to create another; but the two sides of this act are not always equally intended nor equally successful.

I had had a lot of experience in bringing the Internet to Australia, and I saw that knowledge in the hands of people achieves reform.

Governments have always tried to crush reform movements, to destroy ideas, to kill the thing that cannot die. Without regard to history, which shows that no Government have ever succeeded in doing this, they go on trying in the old, senseless way.

You can't stop a reform in the middle. You do it completely and pretty fast, or you don't do it.

I'm not feeling undertaxed. Tax reform is an important issue. You have to have an inherent sense of fairness.

We have seen recently, almost every major head of state goes to India and says, we believe India should be in the Council. They go back home and do nothing about it. But this cannot be sustained for long. If they want to keep the UN as a global forum where they discuss incidents and take some meaningful decisions, they should [reform].

We never can create a public sentiment strong enough to suppress the dram-shops until God's people take hold of the temperance reform as a part of their religion.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.

There is this kind of sense in the immigrant community, first we were going to do immigration reform, but then 9/11 happened.

.......the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter.