Reformer Quotes - page 3

Ignatius who founded the Society, was also a reformer and a mystic. Especially a mystic. (Pope Francis)
What is a man born for but to be a reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good. View quote
Ralph Waldo Emerson
From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. View quote
John Stuart Mill
Every man is a reformer until reform tramps on his toes. View quote
E. W. Howe
This history of culture will explain to us the motives, the conditions of life, and the thought of the writer or reformer. View quote
Leo Tolstoy
Solon was a sort of Athenian Franklin D. Roosevelt... He was an aristocratic reformer who understood instinctively that the aristocracy's monopoly on power had to be loosened and some power given to the lesser orders if social peace was to be shored up. View quote
Thomas Cahill
At Battle Creek, between a housing project dedication at which I spoke and a meeting with local Democratic officials, we made time to visit the grave of another black woman, not a little one but a giant physically as well as spiritually. I put a wreath on her grave and read the sign there: "Sojourner Truth, a renowned lecturer and reformer who championed anti-slavery, rights of women and the freedmen, rests here." View quote
Sojourner Truth
The poetry of Dante may be considered as the bridge thrown over the stream of time, which unites the modern and ancient world. The distorted notions of invisible things which Dante and his rival Milton have idealized, are merely the mask and the mantle in which these great poets walk through eternity enveloped and disguised. It is a difficult question to determine how far they were conscious of the distinction which must have subsisted in their minds between their own creeds and that of the people. Dante at least appears to wish to mark the full extent of it by [The Divina Commedia] . Dante was the first religious reformer, and Luther surpassed him rather in the rudeness and acrimony, than in the boldness of his censures of papal usurpation. Dante was the first awakener of entranced Europe; he created a language, in itself music and persuasion, out of a chaos of inharmonious barbarisms. View quote
Dante Alighieri
Men are seizing on Jesus as the exponent of their own social convictions. They all claim him. ...But in truth Jesus was not a social reformer of the modern type... he approached these facts purely from the moral, and not from the economic or historical point of view. View quote
Walter Rauschenbusch
The end we have to strive for is complete democratic liberty in politics and complete freedom in industry from the tyranny of monopoly and the vagaries of capitalism. Or, employing words appropriate to the spirit of Socialism, we should say that the task of the practical democratic reformer is now to show how the work of democratic liberty, begun so well by the early Radicals but dropped by their modern representatives, is to be completed; how the golden bridge of palliatives between political and social democracy is to be built; and how the foundations of social democracy are to be laid. View quote
Ramsay MacDonald
Ignatius, for understandable reasons, is the saint I know better than any other. He founded our Order. ... Jesuits were and still are the leavening - not the only one but perhaps the most effective - of Catholicism: culture, teaching, missionary work, loyalty to the Pope. But Ignatius who founded the Society, was also a reformer and a mystic. Especially a mystic. ... They have been fundamental. A religion without mystics is a philosophy. ... I love the mystics; Francis also was in many aspects of his life, but I do not think I have the vocation and then we must understand the deep meaning of that word. The mystic manages to strip himself of action, of facts, objectives and even the pastoral mission and rises until he reaches communion with the Beatitudes. Brief moments but which fill an entire life. (Ignatius of Loyola)
There's a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer. View quote
Bashar al-Assad
On every side now the Socialist controversy grew, and I listened, read, and thought much, but said little. The inclusion of John Robertson in the staff of the Reformer brought a highly intellectual Socialist into closer touch with us, and slowly I found that the case for Socialism was intellectually complete and ethically beautiful. View quote
Annie Besant