All reformers are bachelors—all extreme reformers have been bachelors.

Moore’s aphorism wryly links radical social zeal with personal detachment, implying that the most uncompromising reformers are free of the moderating obligations of marriage and family life. The joke depends on a stereotype: domestic ties encourage compromise, patience, and attention to practical consequences, whereas the unmarried can afford purer, more absolute principles. Read this way, the line is less a factual claim than a satirical comment on how private life shapes public ideology—suggesting that “extreme” reform may be fueled by a lack of intimate responsibilities, or by an outsider’s stance toward conventional society. It also hints at the tension between idealism and lived experience.