Reforming The Quotes & Sayings

I believe we're at the verge of the greatest time to be alive in this world.But Washington is holding us back. How we tax, how we regulate. We're not embracing the energy revolution in our midst, a broken immigration system that has been politicized rather than turning it into an economic driver.We're not protecting and preserving our entitlement system or reforming for the next generation. All these things languish while we have politicians in Washington using these as wedge issues. — Jeb Bush

If I know I'm going to be in a little different system, I'm 39, I can plan for that; we can plan for that. Doing nothing, the status quo, is going to guarantee cuts for current seniors ... reforming the system is the only way you shore it up. — Sean Duffy

[ ... ] the sacred - that which is immutable, inviolable and thus infinitely majestic - is in the very substance of our spirit and of our existence. The world is miserable because men live beneath themselves; the error of modern man is that he wants to reform the world without having either the will or the power to reform man, and this flagrant contradiction, this attempt to make a better world on the basis of a worsened humanity, can only end in the very abolition of what is human, and consequently in the abolition of happiness too. Reforming man means bindinghim again to Heaven, reestablishing the broken link; it means tearing him away from the reign of the passions, from the cult of matter, quantity and cunning, and reintegrating him into the world of the spirit and serenity, we would even say: into the world of sufficient reason. — Frithjof Schuon

Things were not as they seemed. The known world was shifting, reforming. Everything he'd taken as a given, a fact, as real and unquestioned, had fallen away. But — Louise Penny

The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself. — Peter Of Alcantara

Here's what I think. I think that a lot of days, for me recently, it's like every split second the whole universe is created and destroyed. It's like constantly collapsing and reforming. And I think a lot of people feel that. I think that love is the answer and that's the only thing that matters. — Andrew VanWyngarden

If anything ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,- for that is the seat of sympathy,-he forthwith sets about reforming the world. — Henry David Thoreau

I believe that reforming our intelligence community is one of the most important things that we can do in order to ensure that our country is in fact safer, stronger and wiser. — Richard Shelby

This is something the Democrats have talked about, and a goal we share, getting everyone insured, and solving the issue in a Republican way, which is applying a personal responsibility principle (individual mandate), reforming the market (more strictly regulating the insurance companies), and allowing people to buy private health care insurance that they can take with them from job to job that's entirely affordable. So it's a Republican way of solving a problem that we face as a nation. — Mitt Romney

The most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine. — Ronald Wright

Erasmus of Rotterdam, a sixteenth-century priest who was committed to reforming the church from within, said, When faith came to be in writings rather than in hearts, contention grew hot and love grew cold. That which is forced cannot be sincere, and that which is not voluntary cannot please Christ. — Shane Claiborne

It strikes me how small everything is, our whole world, everything with a meaning - our stores and our raids and our jobs and our lives, even. Meanwhile the world just goes on the same as always, night cycling into day and back into night, an endless circle; seasons shifting and reforming like a monster shaking off its skin and growing up again. — Lauren Oliver

Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this nation chosen before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huns and Jerome, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. — John Milton

Moreover, the mastermind's tactics are disarming if not seductive. As I wrote in Ameritopia, "[w]here utopianism is advanced through gradualism . . . it can deceive . . . an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. — Mark R. Levin

I have specifically argued that we need to change our relationship with the European Union by fundamentally reforming not just our relationship but the European Union itself. — Michael Gove

The individual can take initiatives without anybody's permission. Only individuals can think. Only the individual disregards his fears and commits himself exclusively to reforming the human environment. — R. Buckminster Fuller

By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely. — Paul Krugman

I've always been interested, - if you look back at my work from the beginning, really - I've always been interested in the idea of the artificial landscape. Reforming the landscape. Architecture being a method of reforming the earth's surface. We reshape the earth's surface, from architecture to paving streets, to parking lots and buildings that are really reforming the surface of the earth. Reforming nature, taking over what we find. And we're mushing it around and remaking a new earth - or, what we used to call Terra Nova. — Lebbeus Woods

There are no doubts that, the situation in the country today, indicates that there is much more work to do in the process of reforming the political economy and improving the quality of life of our people and communities. — Ibrahim Babangida

The basic conviction of a Christian is that God intends good for us and that he will get his way in us. He does not treat us according to our deserts, but according to his plan. He is not a police officer on patrol, watching over the universe, ready to club us if we get out of hand or put us in jail if we get obstreperous. He is a potter working with the clay of our lives, forming and reforming until, finally, he has shaped a redeemed life, a vessel fit for a kingdom. A LONG OBEDIENCE — Eugene H. Peterson

It seems to be impossible to hold a credible election without reforming the electoral system. — Sheikh Hasina

For years, I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions in the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire system, a revolution of values. — Martin Luther King Jr.

His [Turgot's] first important literary and scholastic effort was a treatise On the Existence of God. Few fragments of it remain, but we are helped to understand him when we learn that he asserted, and to the end of his life maintained, his belief in an Almighty Creator and Upholder of the Universe. It did, indeed, at a later period suit the purposes of his enemies, exasperated by his tolerant spirit and his reforming plans, to proclaim him an atheist; but that sort of charge has been the commonest of missiles against troublesome thinkers in all times. — Andrew Dickson White

In The Jack Daniels Sessions, folktales and modern landscapes collide, exploding and reforming in the form of an intriguing and intelligent collection. Cotman seizes the stories of tired tradition and galvanizes them, setting them to dance for us in wonderful, new interpretations. — Cat Rambo

The best young writers are convinced they need blurbs from famous writers before an editor will even read the first page of a manuscript. If this is true, then the editorial system that prevails today stinks. And let's start reforming it. — Diane Wakoski

When it comes to reforming MPs' expenses, the answer is simply to keep it simple: show us receipts as they're claimed and, where there are abuses, enforce the law. — Heather Brooke

You have to reform yourself before reforming society and the world. — Lu Xun

I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron, and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister. — Michael Gove

Daniel Dennett is our best current philosopher. He is the next Bertrand Russell. Unlike traditional philosophers, Dan is a student of neuroscience, linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and psychology. He's redefining and reforming the role of the philosopher. — Marvin Minsky

Toward the end of his life, [Arnold] Toynby said the Christianity he saw developing was brittle, imperialistic and incapable of reforming itself. — John Shelby Spong

Reforming the way the state works with businesses and providing incentives for employers will help preserve and create new jobs in Massachusetts. — Mitt Romney

The earth. Silently spinning, falling, breaking, reforming each and every millionth of a second. The earth, whose conspiracy it is to give everything it has, to offer up itself and only itself, and all of itself. Then to take back, one at a time, all it has given, every richness, every fragment, every follicle, folding it deep into the furnace of its heart, in a cold and perfect contract. — Susan Mann

My experience tells me, unfortunately, that so many people ask the question about 'The Smiths' reforming without really caring about the answer. They just really want to ask the question. — Johnny Marr

Only is a powerful word. It is extreme. It picks a fight. It draws a line in the sand. — Rob Rienow

Never can a reforming sect survive if it is only reforming; the formative elements alone - the real impulse, that is, the principles - live on and on. — Swami Vivekananda

My austerities, fasting and prayers are, I know, of no value if I rely upon them for reforming me. My penance is the prayer of a bleeding heart for forgiveness for sins unwittingly committed. — Mahatma Gandhi

We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way. — Jonathan Haidt

New York Times founder Henry Raymond started his newspaper, "with the goal of reforming government, not belittling it. — Harold Holzer

There's a difference between what I would like to have been and what I would have been. I always fantasized about being a reforming judge or prison governor (I think that the UK penal system is a disgrace) - but it's fantasy. — Mary Beard

Moreover, from reforming the tax code to our immigration system, to commonsense legal reform, President Bush put America on notice that he will continue fighting to make the country, and the world, a better place for future generations. — Jim Sensenbrenner

I realised that even a man's reforming zeal ought not to make him exceed his limits. I also saw that in thus lending trust-money I had disobeyed the cardinal teaching of the Gita, viz., the duty of a man of equipoise to act without desire for the fruit. The error became for me a beacon-light of warning. — Mahatma Gandhi

Not reforming the NHS would have been a much easier decision for me as secretary of state to have taken. We could have just protected the NHS from cuts, put in an extra £12.5bn and left it there. But sooner or later the cracks would have started to show. New treatments would have been held back. — Andrew Lansley

The most helpless person is the one who is helpless in reforming himself. — Ali Ibn Abi Talib

Conservatism has always been about reforming government and solving problems, and that's why the conservative movement should lead on immigration reform. — Marco Rubio

I'm not talking about reforming #Islam..it is to reform the #Muslim minds & the Muslim understandings of the texts. — Tariq Ramadan

In 2007 the 'dagger' of an idea that killed President Bush's effort at reforming the immigration system was lax border security. — Juan Williams

We are working for a revolution. If we do not start it by improving the life of the soldiers, all slogans of reforming and improving society are but empty words. — Chiang Kai-shek

I have a proven record, a record of accomplishment, a record of cutting taxes, of shrinking the government, of reforming education, of challenging the status quo, eliminating career civil service protections, shrinking the government workforce by 11 percent, but leading the nation in job growth. — Jeb Bush

Now, brothers and sisters, we must do our duty, whatever that duty might be. Peace may be denied for a season. Some of our liberties may be curtailed. We may be inconvenienced. We may even be called on to suffer in one way or another. But God our Eternal Father will watch over this nation and all of the civilized world who look to Him. He has declared, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord" (Ps. 33:12). Our safety lies in repentance. Our strength comes of obedience to the commandments of God.
Let us be prayerful. Let us pray for righteousness. Let us pray for the forces of good. Let us reach out to help men and women of goodwill, whatever their religious persuasion and wherever they live. Let us stand firm against evil, both at home and abroad. Let us live worthy of the blessings of heaven, reforming our lives where necessary and looking to Him, the Father of us all. He has said, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). — Gordon B. Hinckley

He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Age is reforming our bodies to better roll with the punches! — Sue Thoele

Uncertainty hurts business. It annoys individuals. Why keep the whole country, including business and individuals, in uncertainty over the extent of the tax burdens to be placed upon us? How many of those who voted for Calvin Coolidge imagined for a moment that would do nothing to bring about tax relief before 1926? ... But if the Administration persists in opposing a special session then it will inevitably be 1926 before action is taken ... Coolidge and Congress should ease our minds and grease our activities by reforming and reducing taxation as soon as feasible after March 4. — B.C. Forbes

Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments. — Andrew Jackson

In the year 1915 a series of trivial incidents led some Chinese students in Cornell University to take up the question of reforming the Chinese language. — Hu Shih

Marriage equality - I think that it's a constitutionally guaranteed right. Let's end the drug wars. Let's balance the federal budget, and that means reforming the entitlements - Medicaid, Medicare. — Gary Johnson

If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even ... he forthwith sets about reforming - the world."3 — Eric Hoffer

The dynamism and freedom that characterizes the West is the product of Christianity's reforming itself and moving forward culturally. The ascendancy of the West is the story of the difference that Christianity makes, and it's a story we can't let our culture forget. — Charles Colson

Reforming the social structures which perpetuate poverty and the exclusion of the poor first requires a conversion of mind and heart. — Pope Francis

There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I'd like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O'Reilly's macaques, which have to have more sense. — Connie Willis

Pride measures prosperity not by her own advantages but by the disadvantages of others. She would not even wish to be a goddess unless there were some wretches left whom she could order about and lord it over, whose misery would make her happiness seem all the more extraordinary, whose poverty can be tormented and exacerbated by a display of her wealth. This infernal serpent, pervading the human heart, keeps men from reforming their lives, holding them back like a suckfish. — Thomas More

If anything, Brown is more oriented towards the other side of the Atlantic than Blair. Most of his reforming ideas and intellectual influences seem to come from the United States, and in a recent speech he went to great lengths to emphasise the historical affinity and shared characteristics of the U.K. and the U.S. — Martin Jacques

it is important to seek godly counsel and the peace of the Spirit. But too often we believe Mr. or Ms. Right will miraculously fill all the gaping holes in our lives. No human being is up for that task. It's a role only God can fill. And you can't manage the condition of anyone else, reforming them into exactly what you think you need. What you can do is embrace God's process of refinement and become a man or woman who selflessly lays down your life for your current or future spouse. In the process of laying down your life, you will discover more fulfillment than if you'd sought your own interests. — John Bevere

I can think of only one remedy for this awful state of things - that educated men should make a point of travelling thirdclass and reforming the habits of the people, as also of never letting the railway authorities rest in peace, sending in complaints wherever necessary, never resorting to bribes or any unlawful means for obtaining their own comforts, and never putting up with infringements of rules on the part of anyone concerned. — Mahatma Gandhi

God is decreeing to begin some newand great period in his Church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself. What does he then but reveal Himself to his servants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen? — John Milton

It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners. — Mary Wollstonecraft

Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties. — Mark R. Levin

Power must be used, but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge, from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs. — Eliot Spitzer

Now, we are seeing many of these same companies face the truth about their financial standing. Congress is faced with the challenge of reforming our accounting industry and holding corporate executives responsible for their actions. — Bennie Thompson

now. They were spirits in their purest forms. Some called them orbs, and sometimes they showed up on photographs. Many non-believers assumed such orbs were dust on the lens. But the camera could never fully capture what I could see. To my eyes, the balls of light were alive with energy, endlessly forming and reforming, gathering smaller particles of energy around them like mini-black holes in outer space. — J.R. Rain

To speak of "the rise of Protestantism" is to offer a controlling narrative that links these potentially disparate events as part of a greater, more significant movement. So persuasive was this emerging narrative that many of the reforming groups scattered across Europe realigned their sense of identity and purpose to conform to it. As these movements began to locate themselves on a historical and conceptual map, each came increasingly to identify itself in terms of what was perceived as a greater overarching movement. A — Alister E. McGrath

Parking Reform Made Easy provides both a theoretical framework and practical methods for reforming parking requirements. By giving planners a sound basis for developing reforms, Richard Willson remedies the problem that many planners feel unqualified to challenge and change long-standing minimum parking requirements. — Donald Shoup

Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world, - 'Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!' I listened to all this with attention; and though, — Charles Dickens

The Master said, 'Can men refuse to assent to the words of strict admonition? But it is reforming the conduct because of them which is valuable. Can men refuse to be pleased with words of gentle advice? But it is unfolding their aim which is valuable. If a man be pleased with these words, but does not unfold their aim, and assents to those, but does not reform his conduct, I can really do nothing with him. — Confucius

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. — Thomas Adams

What Democrats haven't focused on are the kind of policies that would promote economic growth - such as making permanent the 2001/2003 tax cuts, opening up federal lands to more energy production, and reforming government to reduce its burden on business. — Bob Beauprez

As president, I would promote a Fair and Flat Tax plan, known as the 'EZ Tax.' My tax plan would be the largest tax cut in American history, reforming individual, business, and worker taxes. — Rand Paul

Republican governors are leading the way in helping the private sector create new jobs, reforming government and getting our economy back on track. — Bob McDonnell

The process of reforming the mental health system never includes the complaints that families and caregivers have regarding a need for increased access to resources, treatment, education, and financial support. Reform has continued to ignore the basic needs of families and suffering individuals with severe mental illness and special needs. — Tamara Hill

Ukraine will be reforming its energy sector because we want to integrate into Europe, ... We have conducted all the talks and reached an agreement with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Poland and Georgia. — Viktor Yushchenko

The compassionate actions of a Buddha are essential to reforming and revitalizing society. — Vinessa Shaw

The pubic bones (seen on x ray) are now well defined and represent a remarkable rebuilding of bone and halting of the cancer process. The ischium are also reforming and the illi (hip bones) likewise show diminution of bone lysis. No sane, honest physician could call this a "spontaneous remission." — Robert Willner

I have always considered myself of the reforming centre-left. — Charles Kennedy

Analysis goes a step farther still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to which, for each one of us, experience dwindles down, are in perpetual flight; that each of them is limited by time, and that as time is infinitely divisible, each of them is infinitely divisible also; all that is actual in it being a single moment, gone while we try to apprehend it, of which it may ever be more truly said that it has ceased to be than that it is.
To such a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. — Walter Pater

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve. — Irving Howe

President Obama has a good sense not just of the economic requisites for financial crisis firefighting but also how you build political support for moving forward on reforming the financial system, making sure that the banks are carrying enough capital. — Lael Brainard

The key obstacle to reforming aid is public opinion.. Public opinion drives them into the "I care" photo opportunities that dominate aid. — Paul Collier

The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughters hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath - and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light - light dividing like pearls - forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky. — F Scott Fitzgerald

At some point, during the early hours of the morning, the dreams found their way in.
they were dark dreams, treacherous, submerging Violet in their murky depths until she incapable of finding her way to the surface. At first the images were harmless, like some sort of crazy kaleidoscope, drifting in and out of focus, colliding and splintering and reforming again. — Kimberly Derting

Somewhere along the way, Capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just "human rights," and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced. — Arundhati Roy

The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate. — Edmund Burke

I am somewhat influenced by the years that I've spent trying to actually get things done, whether it was reforming education in Arkansas or a survey and Legal Services Corporation board when President [Jimmy ]Carter appointed me and trying to get lawyers for poor people. I have worked in these areas. I know it's more than just a hope. You've got to translate it into a policy that leads to action. — Hillary Clinton

All right, then, I'll go to hell' -and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and I said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog. — Mark Twain

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself. — Benjamin Haydon

One of the greatest reforms that could be, in these reforming days ... would be to have women architects. The mischief with the houses built to rent is that they are all male contrivances. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times. — Lawrence W. Reed

Sometimes I have a notion that what might improve the situation is to have women take over the occupations of government and trade and to give men their freedom. Let them do what they are best at. While we scrawl interoffice memos and direct national or extranational affairs, men could spend all their time inventing wheels, peering at stars, composing poems, carving statues, exploring continents
discovering, reforming, or crying out in a sacramental wilderness. Efficiency would probably increase, and no one would have to worry so much about the Gaza Strip or an election. — Phyllis McGinley

There is no quick fix for illegal immigration. But only when we achieve better control of our borders and better respect for our immigration laws can we give meaning to the discussion we need to have over reforming the numbers, categories, and procedures for legal immigration into the United States. — Jan C. Ting

Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. — Michel De Montaigne

Many still believe that conducting political and economic reforms at the same time is not an Asian way. But this is a fairy-tale. We broke that old stereotype by reforming our political, economic and social systems concurrently since 1990. — Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming, cleaning, modernising our clapped-out system. — Nick Clegg