Radical Reform Quotes

Unless we make revolutionary reforms, some day — in some unknown serra — some unknown Fidel Castro will rise up in Brazil.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

If it was up to me, there wouldn't be no such thing as the establishment.

If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.

Without destruction of the State, there is no revolution.

It takes a revolution, to create a solution

The period of radical reform is finished.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims.

Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed.

I think that in order to make revolution, you need to make reforms, but you should make these reforms with revolution in mind.

Until we start thinking in terms of revolution instead of compromise the Church will continue to pat itself on the back with token steps of renewal.

We have to change the system. The system is very rotten. The executive is corrupt, the Congress is corrupt, the judiciary is corrupt. ... So what's left We really have to have a radical and surgical change to bring back the image of our country.

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.

There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible.

If any imagine from the literary tone of the preceding remarks that we are indifferent to the radical movement for the benefit of the masses which is the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, they will soon discover their egregious mistake.

Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

If, by demanding revolutionary change, I run the risk of accomplishing nothing on behalf of the public, then I'm not sure that's a responsible course of action.

Incremental change will not solve this nation’s problems.

The right of revolution is the inherent right of a people to cast out their rulers, change their policy, or effect radical reforms in their system of government or institutions, by force or a general uprising, when the legal and constitutional methods of making such changes have proved inadequate, or are so obstructed as to be unavailable.

I ask the attention of the public to the paramount necessity of reform in our civil service—a reform not merely as to certain abuses and practices of so-called official patronage which have come to have the sanction of usage in the several Departments of our Government, but a change in the system of appointment itself; a reform that shall be thorough, radical, and complete; a return to the principles and practices of the founders of the Government.

England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country.

Liberals don't care. Their approach is to rip out society's foundations without asking if they serve any purpose. Why do we have immigration laws? What's with these borders? Why do we have the institution of marriage, anyway? What do we need standardized tests for? Hey, I like Keith Richards - why not make heroin legal? Let's take a sledgehammer to all these load-bearing walls and just see what happens!

Wanting to reform everything is the same thing as wanting to destroy everything.

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.

The use of power to bring about radical social and political change in the 1860s carries important implications for the use of federal power to bring about change in matters of race, citizenship, and social welfare today. So long as this remains true—and there us no sign that these issues will go away any time soon.