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Quotations about reformer
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Terrorism set up by reformers may be just as bad as Government terrorism and it is often worse because it draws a certain amount of false sympathy.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Young India (18 Dec 1924)
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 15, epigraph (1894)
The self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Walden, “Visitors” (1854)
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) US President (1909-13) and Chief Justice (1921-1930)
Ladies Home Journal (May 1919)
Regarding the temperance movement. Quoted in Robert J. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone (1992).
The best reformers the world haz ever seen are thoze who commense on themselves.
[The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.]
Josh Billings (1818-1885) American humorist [pseud. of Henry Wheeler Shaw]
Everybody’s Friend, Or; Josh Billing’s Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor, “Nosegays” (1874)
Reforms and discoveries are like offenses; they must needs come, but woe unto that man through whom they come.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 (1934)
The first thing men do when they have renounced pleasure, through decency, lassitude, or for the sake of health, is to condemn it in others. Such conduct denotes a kind of latent affection for the very things they left off; they would like no one to enjoy a pleasure they can no longer indulge in; and thus they show their feelings of jealousy.
Jean de La Bruyère (1645-1696) French essayist, moralist
“Of Mankind,” The Characters [Les Caractères] (1688)
