Reform Limitations Quotes

Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.

Charter schools are not a panacea.

Our focus has to be on changing reality, not changing laws.

Political reforms, without exception, have a down side.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.

Little changes are the enemies of great changes.

Reformers on the left and right alike must give up the fantasy that humans are blank slates who can be overwritten with ideal values, however discomfiting or disappointing the realization may be.

There are limits to what reorganization and reform can do.

School reform is not enough. The notion of schooling itself must be challenged.

Perfect concordance among reformers is not to be expected; and men who are honestly struggling towards the light cannot hope to attain at one bound to the complete truth. There is always a danger lest the fascination of a new discovery should lead us too far. Men of science, being human, are apt, like lovers, to exaggerate the perfections and be a little blind to the faults of the object of their choice.

As a university, we're not focused on bringing about huge reforms - that's not our role.

A reformer knows neither how to do nor to undo.

There comes a time when even the reformer is compelled to face the fairly widespread suspicion of the average man that politics is an exhibition in which there is much ado about nothing.