Tony Blair Quotes

Neither one of us believe that you can fix the culture from within by just throwing money and people at the system. There has to be a systemic change within the system.

We've got to get the system right. That's why we've got this root-and-branch reform under way.

There is complete disdain for all that exists .... History, society, and the economics of present institutions are all minor issues in choosing a reform program ...

Accountability goes hand in hand with reform.

We should put this one-man show behind us. Instead of talking about individuals we should at last be talking about institutions and laws.

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.

You can best fight any existing evil from the inside.

Ending educational inequality is going to require systemic change and a long-term, sustained effort. There are no shortcuts and no silver bullets.

If the House does not reform itself, it will be reformed from outside with a vengeance.

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.

You have to be careful about reform. If you can't trust the system weren't bad shape.

Reform is a monstrous way of dealing with problems.

Correcting what has been for centuries a condition of absolute chaos is not the work of short-winded people.

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

He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted ... must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones.

We can’t change our government unless we change the people who run it.

Human society cannot, be changed in a year.

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

Everybody wants change. But the problem is how you manage change.

Not only are there no free lunches, but there are no free systemic changes either.

Reformation must begin with the GREAT, or it will never be effectual. Their example is the fountain whence the vulgar draw their habits, actions, and characters. To expect to reform the poor while the opulent are corrupt, is to throw odors into the stream while the springs are poisoned.

How much reform do you think this institution [Congress] can take?

Reform campaigns which periodically rock our large cities,—and our small ones, too,— … are not intellectual wars upon erroneous principles, but emotional wars upon errant men: they always revolve around the pursuit of some definite, concrete, fugitive malefactor, or group of malefactors. That is to say, they belong to popular sport rather than to the science of government.

You get few chances to make really transformational institutional change.