reformer

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“
Behind the work of the reformer is the dream of the reformer, the meditation of the mystic, the seer.

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Definitions (5)

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  1. One who effects a reformation or amendment: as, a reformer of manners or of abuses; specifically [capitalized], one of those who instituted or assisted in the religious reformatory movements of the sixteenth century and earlier. God's passionless reformers, influences That purify and heal and are not seen. Lowell, Under the Willows.
  2. One who promotes or urges reform: as, a tariff reformer; a spelling reformer. They could not call him a revenue reformer, and still less could they call him a civil-service reformer, for there were few abuses of the civil service of which he had not, dining the whole of his life, been an active promoter. The Nation, XV. 68.

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Examples (50)

  • The merit of the reformer is his sincerity, not his busy effort to emancipate the slaves or to raise the drunkards. —  Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis
  • There is a certain common-sense foundation for this distrust, for too often the reformer is the rebel who defies things as they are, because of the restraints which they impose upon his individual desires rather than because of the general defects of the system. —  20 Years At Hull House
  • This reformer was a top lieutenant of Ayatollah Khomeini, a man Americans are still told to hate, and he led purges against leftists in the 1980s. —  WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
  • Republican presidential candidate John McCain said running mate Sarah Palin is good for the country because of what he calls her reformer credentials. —  Newsvine - Get Smarter Here
  • He has no credibility to promote himself as a reformer, as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says, adding that McCain has voted repeatedly for the same policies that brought us the financial catastrophe, and he is surrounded by the architects of financial deregulation. —  AFL-CIO NOW BLOG
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