Reform Challenges Quotes

Experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is usually just as its starting on reform.

I really think the single most important thing to remember about trying to fix the schools is that there is no such thing as an instant result.

Reform means difficulties. History moves often by leaps, then it moves slowly, because the resistance is organizing itself.

The apathy of the modern voter is the confusion of the modern reformer.

Any change of government which has to be introduced should be one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to learn.

It is not much to be wondered at if impatient or disappointed reformers, groaning under the impediments opposed to the most salutary public improvements by the ignorance, the indifference, the intractableness, the perverse obstinacy of a people, and the corrupt combinations of selfish private interests armed with the powerful weapons afforded by free institutions, should at times sigh for a strong hand to bear down all these obstacles, and compel a recalcitrant people to be better governed.

Whenever Congress undertakes large-scale reform, there are times when disaster appears certain - only to be averted at the last minute by the good sense of its sometimes unfairly maligned members.

You cannot reform a tax system without some pain and without someone getting hurt.

It is not possible to remake the world. You can fix parts, but you can't remake the world.

Political reforms, without exception, have a down side.

Anyone who would attempt the task of felling a virgin forest with a penknife would probably feel the same paralysis of despair that the reformer feels when confronted with existing school systems.

The tax code was so complicated that it took so long to master it that one lost the will to reform it.

Constitutional reform is exasperatingly slow.

Little changes are the enemies of great changes.

The reform and opening up of China hasn't been happening quite the way we've been told, like a small bird breaking out of its egg. Its more like a cicada shedding its skin, emerging ever so slowly. Energy is the last part of that shell that needs to be shed.

Reform is not like pushing a button…. If you don’t have peace, you have to spend most of your money on the army and security issues. All of these factors won’t make reform fast. It will definitely be slow. We are living under tension … you can’t have reform under tension.

The Senate is extremely slow: They have enormous difficulty passing the bills that even get through the House. That's the reality that I've recognized in my two years: that it takes time to change the world.

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

I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.

The Chinese government today finds it hotter than ever to attract, develop, and retain talent. Graduates from the country’s top universities, who once would have filled government posts, are instead choosing to take jobs in the private sector. Ironically, by creating new opportunities for talented people, three decades of reform have made undertaking new reforms more difficult

It’s been a very slow, very expensive business—reforming the welfare state.

Germany today is a blocked society, incapable of reform.

Welfare reform isn't easy.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.