Reform Quotes

Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it turns out to be not what they meant, other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.

The earth always belongs to the living.

If the facts change, I’ll change my opinion. What do you do, Sir?

Adapt or Die

When the facts change, one ought to change one’s opinion.

Every year humanity takes a step towards Communism. Maybe not you, but … your grandson will surely be a Communist.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

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

The end goal of the feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist revolution, not just elimination of male privilege, but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often.

Bloody revolutions are solid; bloodless ones are not permanent. But we have shed sufficient blood to come to this revolution. It has been shed not only on battlefields, but within the country…There have been many risings, all of which have been suppressed. Let us hope that there will be no more bloodshed. The first duty of our educated people is to enlighten and guide the opponents of our happy revolution.

To criticize one's country is to do it a service and to pay it a compliment. It is a service because it may spur the country to do better than it is doing; it is a compliment because it evidences a belief that the country can do better than it is doing.

Eight hours daily labor is enough for any human being

Public hangings [in England] were abolished in 1868. The last one took place outside Newgate Prison on 26 May of that same year. The man hanged was an Irish terrorist called Michael Barratt who had blown up the Clerkenwell House of Detention killing six people. A drunken crowd stayed up all night to witness the execution. They cheered wildly when the scaffold was brought out at dawn. More people – mainly young women and children – began to arrive. By the time a bell was sounded at eight o’clock in the morning to announce the arrival of the condemned man, the crowd stretched back as far as Smithfield.

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

Be skeptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests.

Religion is an important institution. A nation without religion cannot survive. Yet it is also very important to note that religion is a link between Allah and the individual believer. The brokerage of the pious cannot be permitted. Those who use religion for their own benefit are detestable. We are against such a situation and will not allow it. Those who use religion in such a manner have fooled our people; it is against just such people that we have fought and will continue to fight. Know that whatever conforms to reason, logic, and the advantages and needs of our people conforms equally to Islam. If our religion did not conform to reason and logic, it would not be the perfect religion, the final religion.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about reform.

You cannot possibly persuade people that what they have firmly in mind is not so.

In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey’s civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheikhs. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes and disciples.

[It is] ... a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.