Chris Hedges - Isaiah Berlin - William Shakespeare - Simon Schama TV - Rosa Luxemburg - Yes Prime Minister TV - Susan B Anthony - Robert Ingersoll - Oscar Wilde - Voltaire - Thomas Carlyle - Baltasar Gracian - Misha Glenny - Christopher Hitchens - Jeffrey Sachs -
Reform will come and only come through the building of mass movements and alternative centers of power that can overthrow — let me repeat that word for Homeland Security — overthrow the corporate state. If we fail to sever these chains, we will become like many who did not rise up in time to save their civil society’s human chattel. This means we too must defy the law and engage in civil disobedience. Chris Hedges, Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion, 2014
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance – these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible. Isaiah Berlin, 1909
Yea, at that very moment
Consideration like an angel came
And whipped th’ offending Adam out of him,
Leaving his body as a paradise
T’envelop and contain celestial spirits
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood
With such a heady currance scouring faults. William Shakespeare, Henry V I i 28-35, Canterbury to Ely
Thousands of people reacted to Peterloo by throwing themselves into campaigns of action. Crusades which they embarked on with religious fervour. Those that laboured for change did so now not only in secret political clubs, but in the light of churches and chapels. Their targets were unnatural institutions – the monopoly of the Church of England, the ban on Catholic voters in Ireland. In the manufacturing towns a hue and cry to have their own MPs ... In 1830 a new Revolution in France and a wave of violence in the English countryside meant the votes for change could not be postponed. The Whigs took office for the first time since before 1789 as the champions of reform without revolution. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e1: Forces of Nature, BBC 2002
People who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society, they take a stand for the surface modification of the old society. Our programme becomes not the realisation of socialism, but the reform of capitalism. Rosa Luxemburg
No government is going to reform the system that put it into power. Yes, Prime Minister s2e5: Power to the People, Sir Arnold to Sir Humphrey
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations ... can never effect a reform. Susan B Anthony
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. Robert Green Ingersoll
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. Oscar Wilde
Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself. Voltaire
To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. Thomas Carlyle
Reform is not pleasant, but grievous; no person can reform themselves without suffering and hard work, how much less a nation. Thomas Carlyle
Renew your brilliance. It is the privilege of the Phoenix. Excellence grows old and so does fame. Custom wears down our admiration, and a mediocre novelty can conquer the greatest eminence in its old age. So be reborn in courage, in intellect, in happiness, and in all else. Dare to renew your brilliance, dawning many times, like the sun, only changing your surroundings. Withhold it and make people miss it; renew it and make them applaud. Baltasar Gracian, 1601-58, The World of Worldly Wisdom
The world economy has never experienced a change comparable to the release of 1.25 billion people’s energy that followed China’s renewed reforms in 1991. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Dissidents used to be locked up in the Soviet lunatic asylums for ‘reformist delusions’, it being quite naturally and reasonably assumed that anybody mad enough to propose reforms had lost all sense of self-preservation. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great p254
We need … a much more competent and honest government. Economic reform and political reform must go hand in hand. Without the one there cannot be the other. Jeffrey Sachs, ‘The Price of Civilisation, Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity’