Lucy E. Parsons Quotes

I would say that Barack Obama has always been a real optimist about what can be accomplished. He believes that government can be used to create systemic, long-term, real change. And the first lady is more of a skeptic.

Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age.

Courts should ... follow, rather than lead, changes taking place elsewhere in society.

Great economic and social forces flow with a tidal sweep over communities that are only half conscious of them. Wise statesmen are those who foresee what time is thus bringing, and endeavor to shape institutions and to mold men's thought and purpose in accordance with the change that is silently surrounding them.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

Human society cannot, be changed in a year.

… societies are kept stable and healthy by reform, not by thought police

The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.

Change America—Change the World

When I was growing up, government was the agent of change: it was a developing country. What was important was to make a difference.

And let me say this as a politician I can promise you this, political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see.

Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

I'm trying to change the world.

Throughout American history many of our social gains and much of our progress toward democracy were made possible by the active intervention of the federal government.

There are reformers in every country.

…people consider the things which government does for them to be social progress, but they consider the things the government does for others as socialism.

Human society can only adapt to social change at a certain rate.

The Great Society has arrived and the task of our generation is to bring it under control.

Man is as the Lord made him. But we can change our institutions.

I want to be known as a catalyst for change.

We have to take the world as we find it and do what we can to improve upon it.

When you look at the times in history when change was brought about, there were two factors: crisis and leadership.

The common people, the toilers, the men of uncommon sense—these have been responsible for nearly all social-reform measures which the world accepts today.