"Social reformer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were to point out one trait rather than another that makes Bernard Shaw, for so brilliant a man, so ineffective as a leader, or literary statesman, or social reformer, it would be his modesty. He has never ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... not, the consequences of men's ignorance, barbarism, folly, self-indulgence. The medical man is felt more and more to be necessary in health as he is in sickness, to be the fellow-workman not merely of the clergyman, but of the social reformer, the political economist, and the statesman; and the first object of his science to ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... years later, in the November of 1818, England, and indeed the whole civilized world, received a sudden and painful shock by the death, under conditions peculiarly harrowing, of Sir Samuel Romilly, the great lawyer, social reformer, and philanthropist. Romilly had been deeply attached to his wife, and on her death in October of that year, it would seem that he must have lost his reason, for, in the following month, he committed suicide. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... letters like the following: "I hope the Industrial Home may be saved, and wish I was a rich man just long enough to help save it. As it is, if the subscription needs $30 to fill it up, I shall be glad to give the mite." "I have long followed Maurice," he says again, "in his work as a religious and social reformer—a true apostle of the gospel of humanity. He saw clearly, and in advance of his clerical brethren, the necessity of wise and righteous dealing with the momentous and appalling questions of ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Western plane. The Indian National Congress, unfortunately, succumbed to the specious plea put forward in an evil hour many years ago by a distinguished Hindu, afterwards a Judge of the Bombay High Court, Mr. K.T. Telang, who was himself unquestionably an enlightened social reformer, that the "line of least resistance" was to press for political concessions from England where they had "friends amongst the garrison," instead of fighting an uphill battle for social reforms against the dead-weight of popular ignorance and prejudice amongst their own people. That many members of ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... have women who launch themselves into party politics, and fill their heads with a vast mass of useless knowledge about political tricks, customs, theories and personalities. Thus, too, we have the woman social reformer, trailing along ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians, each with something to sell. And thus we have the woman who goes in for advanced wisdom of the sort on draught in women's clubs—in brief, the sort of wisdom ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... and his influence has always been for good." "And what of the other Henry?" said I, "Hendrik Ibsen?" "Henry Gibson?" said Toole, looking up; "why, I never heard of him." "No! Ibsen," I explained, "Ibsen," smiling as I mentally contrasted the great Norwegian physiologist and social Reformer, and the simple-minded, homely, old-fashioned Englishman whom we all love so well. "Oh! Ibsen, Ibsen," said Mr. Toole, "I didn't catch what you said; I thought you said Gibson, and I couldn't think ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... mind went with that of the general mind of France. During the first half of the century he was primarily a man of letters; from about 1750 onwards he was the aggressive philosopher, the social reformer, using letters as the ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... of Christmas sentiment; we abused the indigestible Christmas dinner, the tiresome Christmas party, the silly Christmas pantomime. Our funny member was side-splitting on the subject of Christmas Waits; our social reformer bitter upon Christmas drunkenness; our economist indignant upon Christmas charities. Only one argument of any weight with us was advanced in favour of the festival, and that was our leading cynic's suggestion that it was worth enduring the miseries of Christmas, to enjoy the soul-satisfying ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... other needs have slipped out of sight; and to-day, often, the hands that follow the machine in its almost human operations, are less human than it. Matter is God, and for scientist and speculative philosopher, and too often for social reformer also, the place and need of another God ceases, and there is no hope for the toiler but to lie down at last in the dust and find it sweet to him. Yet for him, and for each child of man, is something as certain. Not the God of theology; ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... (1844- ), English clergyman and social reformer, was born at Bristol on the 8th of February 1844, the son of Francis Augustus Barnett, an iron manufacturer. After leaving Wadham College, Oxford, in 1866, he visited the United States. Next year he was ordained to the curacy of St Mary's, Bryanston ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... thinking in religion we shall do it in everything else. We reject authority and act for ourselves. Spiritual and temporal power are brought under the same rule. They must justify themselves or go. The Freethinker is thus a politician and a social reformer. What a Christian may be he must be. Freethinkers are naturally Radicals. They are almost to a man on the side of justice, freedom and progress. The Tories know this, and hence they seek to suppress us by the violence ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... organization, at least against that organization we know as the modern State. They have no hope of salvation for themselves coming about through the State in any way. It has become somewhat natural for us to think of the social reformer as a Member of Parliament and of the revolutionary socialist as a "strike-agitator." The cries of "Don't vote!" "Don't enlist!" are heard, and care is taken to keep the workman from ceasing to quarrel with his employer. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... The social reformer assumes that the world is worthy of his care, and that we are here to make it as habitable as we can. He lives in the midst of sinful humanity and accepts the inheritance of earthly conventions. He may choose to live in the slums whilst his spirit ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... faculties of imagination and sympathy overpowered the rest of his mind. He early seized a great truth—that of the claim of every human being to the full development of his faculties, whatever they may be; and the concentration of his strongest powers on this great truth made him a social reformer of a high order. He was not a philosopher; he was not a man of good sense, or temper, or practical ability, generally speaking; though sense, temper, and ability appeared to be all transcendent in the particular ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... overcrowded tenements, to enlarge our overgrown cities, to cause suburb to spread beyond suburb, to submerge more and more the beautiful fields and hilly slopes which used to lie near the busy life of the people, to make the atmosphere more foul, and the task of the social reformer more and yet ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... literature, whose reign was ornamented by a galaxy of scholars, is said to have appointed 50 youths to study Sanskrit but showed no particular inclination towards Buddhism. Neither does it appear to have been the motive power in the projects of the celebrated social reformer, Wang An-Shih. But the dynastic history says that he wrote a book full of Buddhist and Taoist fancies and, though there is nothing specifically Buddhist in his political and economic theories, it is clear from the denunciations against him that ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Socialists praise as a social reformer, marched at the head of the insurrectionists into London, one of his first acts was to burn the stored-up documents of the law, an act which Shakespeare immortalised in his "Henry ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... fortune, refer them to his autobiography, in which he tells his own story and relates the circumstances which, combined with his natural disposition, led him to be a great naturalist and a courageous social reformer; nay more, his autobiography is also in part a peculiar revelation of the inner man such as no biography could approach. We are also able to send inquirers to the biographies and works of his contemporaries—Darwin, Hooker, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... time, these rules, especially if they are numerous and minute, become unsuited, at least in part, to the altered circumstances of the society, and probably bear hardly on many of the individuals composing it. When this condition of things is beginning to be intolerable, there often arises the social reformer, and what is the course which he pursues? He endeavours to shew how unsuitable the rules have become to attain the ends which they were originally intended to compass, in how much better a manner other rules would attain these objects, how grievously the present ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... is in them, anyway; only things that happen, wars and accidents and work and death. When these went newspapers went too. Listen," continued the Man in Asbestos, "you seem to have been something of a social reformer, and yet you don't understand the new life at all. You don't understand how completely all our burdens have disappeared. Look at it this way. How used your people to spend all the early part of ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... the more inspired species of social reformer that what good men deem theoretically advisable is sure to happen sooner or later. In some cases, if the man be talented as well as good, it happens quickly. Within a few months of Jean's desertion came the last touch ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... POEM, your MESSAGE, that must prevail,—not YOU, who wrote it. You preach a doctrine of abnegation, of self-obliteration, and you sign your name to your words as high on the tablets as you can reach, so that all the world may see, not the poem, but the poet. Presley, there are many like you. The social reformer writes a book on the iniquity of the possession of land, and out of the proceeds, buys a corner lot. The economist who laments the hardships of the poor, allows himself to grow rich upon ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... been some relief. For Maitland, in the course of his philanthropic labors, had known old Dicky Shields, the naturalist and professional tattooer, as a hopeless mauvais sujet. But Dicky's daughter, Margaret, had been a daisy flourishing by the grimy waterside, till the young social reformer transplanted her to a school in the purer air of Devonshire. He was having her educated there, and after she was educated—why, then, Maitland had at one time entertained his own projects or dreams. In the way of their accomplishment Dicky ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... evident why Mr. Shaw is far better as lecturer, debater, pamphleteer, and writer of critical essays than as writer of either romances or plays. He is primarily a social reformer, like Henry George and Karl Marx, though he brings more wit, cleverness, driving power, and intellectual agility to bear upon his subjects. He is interested in public morality and "affairs," in generalities rather than individuals, in ideas about life rather than ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... where they can take shelter without the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in their religious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action as regards caste rules. The whole account given by the Pundita of the life of the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the social reformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfully well written, is likely to produce a radical change in the educational schemes that at ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... to, Juan. That is how things were arranged on earth. I was not a social reformer; and I always did what it was customary for a ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... our excellence, and set to work to re-establish it. Of course the vilest cooking in the kingdom is found in London; is it not with the exorbitant growth of London that many an ill has spread over the land? London is the antithesis of the domestic ideal; a social reformer would not even glance in that direction, but would turn all his zeal upon small towns and country districts, where blight may perhaps be arrested, and whence, some day, a reconstituted national life may act upon the great centre of corruption. I had far rather see England covered with schools of ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing |
