Ray Stannard Baker Quotes

We "muckraked" not because we hated our world but because we loved it.

the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something about what you've been writing about. You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

I love the idea of people walking away with the idea of hope and possibility.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

I remember being young in the 1960s... we had a great sense of the future, a great big hope. This is what is missing in the youth today. This being able to dream and to change the world.

I'm trying to change the world.

Muck-raker

History teaches us that the great revolutions aren’t started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better—and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved.

Slavery was the rare subject where Jefferson’s sense of realism kept him from marshaling his sense of hope in the service of the cause of reform.

What makes Progressives is their confidence in Progress.

If people come out of an election and everyone’s despairing, everyone’s in a collective civic funk, we don’t get anything done. Simply reminding people of how bad things are and what you lost, nobody’s moved by that. People are moved by the sense of possiblity, a sense of hope.

I've always been a dreamer.

I was a dreamer, and I still am one.

I'm a utopianist.

We live by admiration, hope and love.

The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.

I believe in love - yes, I'm one of those girls.

Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.

Nothing's hopeless except never trying.

Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...

We saw too much beauty to be cynical, felt too much joy to be dismissive, climbed too many mountains to be quitters, kissed too many girls to be deceivers, saw too many sunrises not to be believers, broke too many strings to be pro's and gave too much love to be concerned where it goes.

Love is the seed of all hope. It is the enticement to trust, to risk, to try, to go on.

So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

For hope is always born at the same time as love.