Quotes About Political Reform

#1. Inspiring scenes of people taking the future of their countries into their own hands will ignite greater demands for good governance and political reform elsewhere in the world, including in Asia and in Africa.

William Hague

#2. If people are innately saddled with certain sins and flaws, like selfishness, prejudice, sort-sightedness, and self-deception, then political reform would seem to be a waste of time.

Steven Pinker

#3. The elections are the greatest symbol of participation and political reform,

Mohammad Khatami

#4. The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions.

William Hague

#5. The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.

Bashar Al-Assad

#6. Ten years ago I said, you know, my goal is to be able to get food on the table. What I'm trying to say by that is trying to create a vibrant, capable and effective middle class. The quicker and stronger that we can be able to do this, the easier it is for political reform to move forward.

Abdallah II Of Jordan

#7. About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

Reed Hastings

#8. Grown-up politicians talk to each other across party lines. Over the last few weeks I have had lengthy conversations with Ed Miliband, David Miliband, with Tony Blair, with Peter Mandelson ... talking about Europe, talking about political reform.

Nick Clegg

#9. The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction ... the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

Leo Tolstoy

#10. Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization.. I hold unconventional views about this.. I do not believe if you are a libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.

Lee Kuan Yew

#11. The Liberal Democrat Party and the Conservative Party come at things very differently when it comes to Europe. When it comes to political reform, we have a much greater tradition in the Liberal Democrats of social justice and fairness than the Conservatives do.

Nick Clegg

#12. Mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society. There requires a social reform, a domestic reform, an individual reform.

Samuel Smiles

#13. A major goal of our strategy in Asia was to promote political reform as well as economic growth. We wanted to make the 21st century a time in which people across Asia become not only more prosperous but also more free. And more freedom would, I was confident, spur greater prosperity.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

#14. If you have political reform in the Islamic world, the spiritual reform would follow.

Imran Khan

#15. For me, the beauty of feminism is that it is a social and political movement that has redefined the power and obligation of the self: self-possession and self-regulation as a tool for social reform.

Vivian Gornick

#16. Reform is like morning glories; they look great early in the day and then they disappear.

George W. Plunkitt

#17. I am happy that the urgency to reform our broken criminal justice system has found allies all across the political spectrum.

Cory Booker

#18. Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform.

Michael Parenti

#19. You don't die when your body stops functioning. You die when your name is uttered for the last time in the world.

Abhijit Naskar

#20. When the business interests ... pushed through the first installment of civil service reform in 1883, they expected that they would be able to control both political parties equally.

Carroll Quigley

#21. To attempt social reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of the race without aiming, first and foremost, at political freedom is the very height of ignorance and futility.

Sri Aurobindo

#22. Radical thought has inspired many of the great political and social reform movements in American history, from ending slavery to establishing the minimum wage.

Carl Bernstein

#23. He led the state through a budget crisis, natural disasters, and political turmoil, working across party lines for a better environment, election reforms, and bipartisan solutions.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

#24. Each reform, therefore, improving the economical and political situation of the workers proves to be an arm that increases the energy with which the proletarian struggle of classes is fought.

Clara Zetkin

#25. Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the Reform Judaism, it is more about politics.

Glenn Beck

#26. Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.

Gore Vidal

#27. There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. This would nevertheless require a courageous change of attitude on the part of political leaders.

Pope Francis

#28. Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it.

Tony Judt

#29. I have a lot of stands on a lot of political issues. I'm very big on campaign finance reform. I still think most Americans aren't aware of how the dumping of big corporate dollars and private donor dollars has totally corrupted the political system and taken it away from them.

Morgan Fairchild

#30. You are born to build the society, not to follow it.

Abhijit Naskar

#31. So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so.

Eric Alterman

#32. What if I've died a long time ago and come here? he wondered. What if the defining characteristic of hell is that you're locked in an endless, blind battle to reform it?

Karan Mahajan

#33. We need a reform of the Security Council. It must be perceived as truly representative by all the 191 member states, to uphold the credibility and legitimacy of the UN as the main political arena.

Anna Lindh

#34. But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

Robert McChesney

#35. Throw away the newspapers. Discard all the useless debates and gossiping. Start working in silence. Start working on your passion. And make the news yourself.

Abhijit Naskar

#36. In the past 20 years and more since China embarked on the road of reform and opening up, we have moved steadfastly to promote political restructuring and vigorously build democratic politics under socialism.

Jinato Hu

#37. A politician is just like a pickpocket; it's almost impossible to get him to reform.

Will Rogers

#38. If it does not serve the Iraqi people, there are only political means that must be followed to reform the government - a new government that we must give a chance to prove that it is there to serve the people.

Muqtada Al Sadr

#39. Many of us believe that we need health care reform. That being said - Americans felt like they weren't being listened to. There were a lot of people across the political spectrum who said we don't want a one-size-fits-all healthcare plan.

Timothy Griffin

#40. Class warfare or soaking the so-called rich may make for good populist demagoguery and serve the political ends of the governing masterminds, but it does nothing to solve the grave realities of the federal government's insatiable appetite for spending and its inability to reform itself.

Mark R. Levin

#41. I've decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can stand up there and resist it.

William Odom

#42. Those life experiences that helped shaped my political beliefs are with me in every position I take and every vote that I cast - whether it be in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, or improving our nation's education system.

Mark Takano

#43. The Liberal Party abandoned the principles of reform and social liberalism and has become, instead, just another piece of political machinery in the service of corporatism.

Eric Kierans

#44. When it comes to immigration reform, now is the time ... I've never seen a better political environment ... I'm not doing immigration reform to solve the Republican Party's political problem. I'm trying to save our nation from, I think, a shortage of labor and a catastrophic broken system.

Lindsey Graham

#45. A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

John Stuart Mill

#46. Unfortunately, the media, which are not at all reluctant to act in their own self-interest, have succeeded in equating reform in the public mind with further restrictions on just about everyone else's freedom of political speech.

James L. Buckley

#47. It's an embarrassment that we don't have a broad enough consensus among political leaders that true reform should take place. I could count the members of Congress on one hand that took these issues seriously.

DeForest Soaries

#48. If we're able to stop Obama on [health care reform], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him and we will show that we can, along with the American people, begin to push those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society.

Jim DeMint

#49. America does not need another political campaign based on denial and avoidance of some of our real problems. It needs a crusade to reform and renew our country, its institutions and political system.

Richard Lamm

#50. 'Excessive regulation in the banking reform bill will destroy a substantial part of our bond-distributing machinery. Can anyone expect that a step of this kind will improve the quality of our long-term investments?'

Barry Ritholtz

#51. I think, from the broad political spectrum, not just the Freedom Caucus, I think there is a need for internal reform that is how we bring bills up, getting back to regular order, how we offer amendments or don't offer amendments.

Jason Chaffetz

#52. Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region.

Frank Carlucci

#53. Political changes and reforms do not usually favor the general populace. They benefit those who are positioned to best organize and advocate for their policies.

Joel Miller

#54. The health care bill is nothing about health care- it's about controlling the people.

David Lincoln

#55. Our responsibility has never been to moralize the unconverted; it's to convert the immoral. Our responsibility is redemptive, not political. We do not have a moral agenda; we have a redemptive agenda. We can't reform the kingdom of darkness that Satan rules.

John F. MacArthur Jr.

#56. Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you.

Paul Ryan