Reuven Rivlin Quotes

They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.

Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.

All I want to do is change the world.

I'm trying to change the world.

Also by my earliest days, I was fascinated by a utopian vision of what the world could be like. I've thought that science could be the basis for a better world, and that's what I've been trying to do all these years.

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

We have been trying at Washington to remove some of the shackles that have been put upon American business; but after you have removed the shackles you must determine what you are going to do with your liberty. And there are many tasks to perform for mankind. There are many things to be bettered in this world.

One advantage of not being in power is that we can dream of reshaping the world exactly as we please.

If people are not patient and want radical change, it could set China back in a way to harm a lot of people. I advocate more freedom based on stability.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate.

You may say i'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.

I have no notions of a perfect society, I don’t know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we’ve got, I’m no utopian, I’m not a humanist that would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony: I know that if we don’t live that way, we’ll kill each other and destroy the Earth.

We muckraked, not because we hated our world, but because we loved it. We were not hopeless, we were not cynical, we were not bitter.

… utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.

The duty of an American churchman in China is not simply introducing new ideas into the country, but modifying its industrial, social, and political life and institutions. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms. In America, possibly because of whatever the American dream is, this happens over and over again. These eras repeat.

That's why I want to change Mississippi. You don't run away from problems - you just face them.

Politics, in general, when you're trying to change the world for the better in any kind of way, no matter how small or how big, it's inches.

Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.

Today, my heart and soul lives peacefully for the hope that the 21st century will have to face a great challenge, a peaceful struggle for the enlightenment of humanity.

We didn't have any solution to the world's problems. I mean, we were trying to grow up in a socialist way to some future where the world might be less of a miserable place than it is.

The power of youth is the common wealth for the entire world. The faces of young people are the faces of our past, our present and our future. No segment in the society can match with the power, idealism, enthusiasm and courage of the young people.

I am not shy. I am for an open society. I am for a progressive world. I do not propose to reform France; I propose to transform it at its deepest level.