Human nature Quote by William Graham Sumner

“What's good for reform is bad for the reformers”

— Loren D. Estleman Gas City

It is one of the ironies of history that reformers so often misjudge the consequences of their reforms.

— John W. Gardner

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

— George Bernard Shaw

The majority, being satisfied with the ways of mankind as they now are (for it is they who make them what they are), cannot…

— John Stuart Mill

It is better sometimes not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond the threshold of their homes.

— George Eliot

Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object…

— Thomas Jefferson

Problems are cured by facing their cause.

— Vernon Howard

“Oh," I answered vaguely, "there are still reformers of all sorts in the world." "Reformers!" he cried, his face lighting up with a new…

— Various

Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish,--and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are notequal to the…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Resistance to improvement contradicts the noblest instincts of the race. It begets its opposite. The fanaticism of reform is only the raging of the…

— Horace Mann

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the…

— Irving Howe