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Revolution and Reform Quotes and Quotations
 A nation without the means of reform is without the means of survival.  Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age. All reformers are bachelors. Not actual suffering but the hope of better things incites people to revolt. The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the roots. Thinkers prepare the revolution; bandits carry it out. Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. In almost any society, I think, the quality of the non-conformists is like to be just as good as, and no better than that of the conformists. Whatever little we have gained, we have gained by agitation, while we have uniformly lost by moderation. Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. One revolution is like one cocktail, it just gets you organized for the next. A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat. A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat. The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution. It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honour, his religion, his soul, and lay the foundation for that empire's fall or its regeneration. It is essential to the triumph of reform that it shall never succeed. It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone. Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity. It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons. By gnawing through a dyke, even a rat may drown a nation. The times spat at me. I spit back at the times. All reform except a moral one will prove unavailing. I hold it, that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Riots are the voices of the unheard. If we should promise people nothing better than only revolution, they would scratch their heads and say, 'Isn't it better to have good goulash?' I survived. (J'ai vecu.) Big Brother is watching you. 
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