Peter Murrell Quotes

Great institutions can only be reformed by stealth or by revolution.

Beginning reform is beginning revolution.

The period of radical reform is finished.

This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.

Rebellion is obsolete - change things from the inside working out.

You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness.

The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.

We must not be willing to disinter the origins of those [institutions] we wish to preserve.

You cannot just change regimes; you have to change mindsets.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history. Drive them full speed ahead and keep them on the rails... .

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.

Precedents establish expectations of what is fair. Does fairness require the perpetuation of unfair, unwise, or even dangerous past precedents?

In the past Russia needed liberty to live better. It must now have it in order to survive…. The challenge of our times is an overhaul of the system of values, the forging of a new consciousness. We cannot build a new country with old thinking …

Everything changes.... Social life changes, and with it the "national question" changes, too. At different periods different classes enter the arena, and each class has its own view of the "national question." Consequently, in different periods the "national question" serves different interests and assumes different shades, according to which class raises it, and when.

No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

The Crusaders who slaughtered their way to Jerusalem in 1099 were as Christian as the Christians of the Renaissance and of today.

We don't have to be imprisoned by the past. When something isn't working, we can and should change.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans–mostly under 30–are determined to destroy our society

No American ever dies in the country in which he was born.

You can’t undo a thousand years of history by sending military troops into a country.

People all over the world are today questioning matters that only a few generations ago were generally seen as "just the way things are.”

Accountability goes hand in hand with reform.