Quotes about Reform

Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

Although the church has often been far too slow to follow his lead, Jesus' insistence that women, as well as men, bear the full image of God has had a way of sparking reform movements across the centuries.

'Getting smart on crime' does not mean reducing sentences or punishments for crimes.

I became a much more ardent citizen and feminist than anyone about me in the intermediate years would have dreamed possible. I had learned that if you wanted to institute any kind of reform, you could get far more attention if you had a vote than if you lacked one.

It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

I am a radical in thought (and principle) and a conservative in method (and conduct).

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

Three dominant evils prevailed—clerical concubinage, simony, and corruption within the church.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity and the desire to torment and reform.

At first the solution was to build more prisons and cram more people into them, but that soon became prohibitively expensive. (Here Ed flicks through a few more slides.) Not only that, it resulted in platoons of prison graduates with professional-grade criminal skills they were more than willing to exercise once they were back in the outside world.