Frederic Bastiat Quotes

Societies either roll on blindly to disaster or they find the inner strength to stop themselves long enough to find ways for reform from within.

It is not enough to criticize society without offering a workable alternative.

We must reform society before we can reform ourselves.

If society will not admit of woman's free development, then society must be remodeled.

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.

Reforms are less to be dreaded than revolutions, for they cause less reaction.

Too often reform involves the mechanics of change rather than the underlying values.

We are making our revolution slowly and by constitutional methods.

… evolution over revolution.

From the moment when a subordinate class becomes really independent and dominant, calling into being a new type of State, the need arises concretely, of building a new intellectual and moral order, i.e. a new type of society.

Your honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the form of our present government; that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in the change of both but by perfectly peaceable and orderly means....

Change comes in various wavelengths. There are changes in the game, changes in the rules of the game, and changes in how the rules are changed

All great reforms go together.

I am for the restoration of order, not for the restoration of the old order.

Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

The period of radical reform is finished.

The American people are not inclined to change their society in order to free the Negro. They are ready to undertake some, and perhaps major reforms, but not to make a revolution.

There’s a carrying capacity in any society for how much change it can incorporate at any one time.

As the Occupy Movement demonstrated, it's tough to change anything when you're talking about everything.

To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.

In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history.

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

You cannot get a new economy without a new society.

Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.