Gradual Reform Quotes

It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation peaceably and in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly, and their place be pari passu filled up by free white laborers. If on the contrary it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up.

While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a single day.

People want change but not too much change. Finding that balance is tricky for every politician.

There was no place in the land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No place in all the land but one - the pulpit. It yielded last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession - at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery texts in the Bible remained; the practice changed; that was all.

We are making our revolution slowly and by constitutional methods.

Time only and long experience can bring remedies to defects in the customs of a state whose form is already determined.

What's the difference between a communist or socialist and a progressive? Revolution or evolution? One requires a gun and the other eats away slowly.

The Russian government pushed too hard to change the system overnight.

It is doubtless wise, when a reform is introduced, to try to persuade the British public that it is not a reform at all; but appearances must be kept up to some extent at least.

If you don’t have thirty years for a problem, don’t get involved in social policy.

The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.

Gradual, and not sudden emancipation, is better for all.

Systemic change rarely comes overnight.

In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.

I am always for change. But I believe in slow and inevitable change and not a forced one, all of a sudden.

[Transvaal President Paul] Kruger … dribbles out reforms like water from a squeezed sponge.

If you're going to do economic reform, you'd better do it in one fell swoop rather than a little bit at a time.

I am a believer in change peu a' peu (little by little) since drastic changes, including lots of changes made all at once, are often the sort of modifications that don't stick.

The Japanese people are usually very prudent, even when they are convinced change is necessary.

A truly English protest march would see us all chanting: 'What do we want? GRADUAL CHANGE! When do we want it? IN DUE COURSE!

Like the battleships of old, omnibus programs present too tempting a target, too easily destroyed by a single attack, to make it through a fight.... It is through incremental change after change, step after step, that a statesman of today can vindicate a bold vision.

Historically speaking, institutions are slow to change and usually resistant to any sudden moves - churches especially so.

Presumably a movement is more polite than a revolution, and a lot slower.

I well remember a leading Egyptian liberal saying to me in 2003 that she did not favor free elections right then in Egypt; she favored them in a decade's time if she and others had those 10 years to organize freely.

It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make asally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.