Quotes by Social Reformers - Page 3

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions."Henry Ward Beecher
Henry Ward Beecher
The use of tobacco is one of the most evident of all the retrograde influences of our time. It invades all classes, destroys social life, and is turning, in the words of Mantegazza, the whole of Europe into a cigar divan.
Charles R. Drysdale
Of the thousands who have paid homage to virtue, barely one has thought to inspect the pedestal on which it stands.
Frances Wright
I feel virtuous because my soul is at ease.
Frances Wright
Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
Henry Ward Beecher
Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.
B.R. Ambedkar
Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.
B.R. Ambedkar
In the bitter waves of woe, Beaten and tossed about By the sullen winds that blow From the desolate shores of doubt,­­ When the anchors that faith had cast Are dragging in the gale, I am quietly holding fast To the things that cannot fail: In the darkest night of the year,  When the stars have all gone out,  That courage is better than fear,  That faith is truer than doubt; And fierce though the fiends may fight,  And long though the angels hide, I know that Truth and Right Have the universe on their side; And somewhere, beyond the stars, Is a Love that is better than fate; When the night unlocks her bars I shall see Him, and I will wait
Washington Gladden
Ambition is the necessary spur of a great mind to great action; when acting upon a weak mind it impels it to absurdity, or sours it with discontent.
Frances Wright
On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value.In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.
B.R. Ambedkar
History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.
B.R. Ambedkar
If you will study the history of Christ's ministry from Baptism to Ascension, you will discover that it is mostly made up of little words, little deeds, little prayers, little sympathies, adding themselves together in unwearied succession. The Gospel is full of divine attempts to help and heal, in the body, mind and heart, individual men. The completed beauty of Christ's life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty -- talking with the woman at the well; going far up into the North country to talk with the Syrophenician woman; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart, that kept him out of the kingdom of Heaven; shedding a tear at the grave of Lazarus; teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; preaching the Gospel one Sunday afternoon to two disciples going out to Emmaus; kindling a fire and broiling fish, that His disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore after a night of fishing, cold, tired, discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of God's interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed in what is minute.
Charles Henry Parkhurst
Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.
B.R. Ambedkar
Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered.
B.R. Ambedkar
Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell.
Henry Ward Beecher
the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't
Henry Ward Beecher
The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have...Now what is the basis of Buddhism? If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason. There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion.
B.R. Ambedkar
One cannot walk in such regions, consciouslywithout enlargement of thought. There areheights and valleys which, to those who seekthem in a sympathetic spirit, are better" seats of learning " than any school or university in the land ; there are days when the climber seems to rise into a rarer mental as well as visual atmosphere, and to leave far below him the crass cares and prejudices of commonplace life.
Henry Stephens Salt
What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.
B.R. Ambedkar
So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.
B.R. Ambedkar
Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
Henry Ward Beecher
Every man must have a philosophy of life, for everyone must have a standard by which to measure his conduct. And philosophy is nothing but a standard by which to measure.
B.R. Ambedkar
The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings.
Henry Ward Beecher
For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights.
B.R. Ambedkar
You must abolish your slavery yourselves. Do not depend for its abolition upon god or a superman. Remember that it is not enough that a people are numerically in the majority. They must be always watchful, strong and self-respecting to attain and maintain success.We must shape our course ourselves and by ourselves.
B.R. Ambedkar
Atheism deprives superstition of its stand ground, and compels Theism to reason for its existence.
George Holyoake
If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all his thinking, damages his personality, makes him landlord to a ghost.
Henry Ward Beecher
My definition of democracy is - A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.
B.R. Ambedkar
Democracy is not merely a form of Government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards our fellow men.
B.R. Ambedkar
It is not what a man gets, But what a man is,That he should think of.He should first think of his character,And then of his condition.He that has character need have no fear of his condition.Character will draw condition after it.
H.W. Beecher (1813-1887)
There is more food in a pennyworth of bread than in a gallon of ale.
Joseph Livesey
We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
Henry Ward Beecher
Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.
Felix Adler
One cannot have any respect or regard for men who take the position of the reformer and then refuse to see the logical consequences of that position, let alone following them out in action.
B.R. Ambedkar
The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of
Charles Henry Parkhurst
Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
Henry Ward Beecher
Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.
William Beveridge
It is a man's duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries in life.
Henry Ward Beecher
The world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember.
Jacob A. Riis
Ones best success comes after their greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher
What is dying?I am standing on the seashore.A ship sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.She is an object and I stand watching herTill at last she fades from the horizon,And someone at my side says, “She is gone!” Gone where?Gone from my sight, that is all;She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her,And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her;And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone”,There are others who are watching her coming,And other voices take up a glad shout,“There she comes” – and that is dying.
Charles Henry Brent
Life should be great rather than long.
B.R. Ambedkar
Once more, my harp! once more, although I thoughtNever to wake thy silent strings again,A wandering dream thy gentle chords have wrought,And my sad heart, which long hath dwelt in pain,Soars, like a wild bird from a cypress bough,Into the poet's Heaven, and leaves dull grief below
Caroline Norton
My method is atheism. I find the atheistic outlook provides a favourable background for cosmopolitan practices. Acceptance of atheism at once pulls down caste and religious barriers between man and man. There is no longer a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. All are human beings. Further, the atheistic outlook puts man on his legs. There is neither divine will nor fate to control his actions. The release of free will awakens Harijans [lowest caste] and the depressed classes from the stupor of inferiority into which they were pressed all these ages when they were made to believe that they were fated to be untouchables. So I find the atheistic outlook helpful for my work [helping people]. After all it is man that created god to make society moral and to silence restless inquisitiveness about the how and why of natural phenomena. Of course god was useful though a falsehood. But like all falsehoods, belief in god also gave rise to many evils in course of time and today it is not only useless but harmful to human progress. So I take to the propagation of atheism as an aid to my work. The results justify my choice.
Goparaju Ramachandra Rao
One best success comes after their greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher
If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.
B.R. Ambedkar
A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar.
B.R. Ambedkar
Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value.If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty... In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity.
B.R. Ambedkar
Slavery does not merely mean a legalised form of subjection. It means a state of society in which some men are forced to accept from others the purposes which control their conduct.
B.R. Ambedkar
Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self too.
B.R. Ambedkar
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Henry Ward Beecher
The greatness of the man's power is the measure of his surrender.
William Booth
Work as if everything depended upon work and pray as if everything depended upon prayer.
William Booth
Make me strong. Not to be superior to others. To fight my greatest ennemy. Myself.
Kalki
Well married, a man is winged—ill-matched, he is shackled.
Henry Ward Beecher
There are more quarrels smothered by just shutting your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom in the world.
Henry Ward Beecher
I send thee, love, this upland flower I foundWhile wandering lonely with o'erclouded heart,Hid in a grey recess of rocky groundAmong the misty mountains far apart;And then I heard the wild wind's luring soundWhich whoso trusts, is healed of earthborn care,And watched the lofty ridges loom around,Yet yearned in vain their secret faith to share.When lo! the sudden sunlight, sparkling keen,Poured full upon the vales this glorious day,And bared the abiding mountain-tops serene,And swept the shifting vapour-wreaths away:Then with the hills' true heart my heart beat true,Heavens opened, cloud-thoughts vanished, and I knew.
Henry Stephens Salt
Oh, God! That bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!
Jacob A. Riis
The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity.
Bal Gangadhar Tilak