He who reforms himself, has done more toward reforming the public, than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots.

Fixing one person’s conduct is slow, unglamorous and completely within reach; fixing everyone else’s is exciting and mostly imaginary. The loud reformer gets the feeling of being useful without the discomfort of changing anything they control. Meanwhile a person who quietly stops doing the thing they were complaining about has reduced the amount of it in the world by a measurable unit.

Take the fault you most dislike in public life and find its small domestic version in you. Work on that version this week, and let the opinions wait until the conduct has caught up.