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A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal.
-Proverb
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Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.
-Spiro T. Agnew, speech before Illinois Republican meeting, Springfield, Illinois, September 10, 1970
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There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one's good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.
-Roland Barthes
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A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
-Leonard Bernstein, "The New York Times", October 30, 1988
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The hard-core intentionalist expresses only the most remote concern for consequences - usually, some vague, distant utopia. But this is, in most cases, a rationalization. His real satisfaction comes from a sense of doing the right thing - even when right has, in his mind, no clear connection with reality.
http://www.libertyhaven.com/theoreticalorphilosophicalissues/ethics/moralityofgood.html
-Robert James Bidinotto, essay: The Morality of Good Intentions, "The Freeman, A publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.", March, 1987
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If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments -- we'd have the Ten Suggestions.
-Malcolm Bradbury
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The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
-Lenny Bruce
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As with most liberal sexual ideas, what makes the world a better place for men invariably makes it a duller and more dangerous place for women.
-Julie Burchill
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The American insanity for Loving Everybody is ruining my good temper and delivering my stomach to enormous bouts with acidity.
-Taylor Caldwell, On Growing Up Tough chapter: Dolts and Love Cultists
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A liberal is man who will give away everything he doesn't own.
-Frank Dane
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My objection to Liberalism is this -- that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind -- namely, politics -- of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public ignominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife.
-Barbara Ehrenreich
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One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true
-John Fowles, The Magus
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A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-Robert Frost
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A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-Robert Frost
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A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.
-Carter Glass
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Liberalism, austere in political trifles, has learned ever more artfully to unite a constant protest against the government with a constant submission to it.
-Alexander Herzen
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You just stood there screaming
Fearing no one was listening to you
They say the empty can rattles the most
The sound of your own voice must soothe you
Hearing only what you want to hear
And knowing only what you've heard
You, you're smothered in tragedy
And you're out to save the world.
-James Hetfield
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Liberalism, above all, means emancipation -- emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination... from poverty.
-Hubert Humphrey
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The most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority
-Henrik Ibsen, Enemy of the People (p.117)
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I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
-G. C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg
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Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs.
-Norman Mailer
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The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality or give up the battle in despair.
-Margaret Mead
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The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics,that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
As cited in Losing Legitimacy: Street Crime and the Decline of Social Institutions in America by Gary LaFree 1998 : Moynihan is quoted in an article that appeared in Mickey Kaus, The Work Ethic State, The New Republic (1986) July 7:22-33, 23; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986).
-Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.
-Benito Mussolini
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A liberal is a man who is right most of the time, but he's right too soon.
-Gregory Nunn
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The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things -- war and hunger and date rape -- liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
-P. J. O'Rourke
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Liberalism -- it is well to recall this today -- is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak.
-Jos
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A liberal is a power worshipper without the power.
-George Orwell
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When anything goes, it's women who lose.
-Camille Anna Paglia
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The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
-Bertrand Russell
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Any attempt at a rational discussion of the economic realities of government-controlled medical care is almost certain to run up against the trump card of the political left: The Poor.
The image that is often invoked is that of the elderly poor, forced to choose between food and medical treatment. Who could be so heartless as to abandon them to the vagaries of the free market?
This has proved to be a very effective political strategy for extending government power, not only over medical care but also over housing and other sectors of the economy.The phoniness of this argument becomes apparent the moment you suggest that money be set aside specifically for dealing with the special problems of the poor, rather than bringing whole sectors of the economy under the dominance of politicians, bureaucrats and judges.
The amount of money needed to take care of the poor is often some minute fraction of what sweeping new government programs cost. But, while big government liberals are willing to use the poor as human shields in their political battles, their more basic strategy is to proclaim that everyone has a right to some basic need that they want the government to provide.
As a matter of practical politics, programs for the poor alone do not have as large a constituency as programs to give everybody some benefit, so that we can all have the illusion of getting something for nothing
-Thomas Sowell, Jewish World Review, Nov. 14, 2003
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I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these days? The liberals were liberators -- they fought slavery, fought for women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be ashamed of?
-Barbra Streisand
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The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until one day America will be a Socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.
-Norman Thomas
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I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means -- except by getting off his back.
-Leo Tolstoy
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We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.
-Lionel Trilling
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A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children.
-Source Unknown
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The liberal holds that he is true to the republic when he is true to himself. (It may not be as cozy an attitude as it sounds.) He greets with enthusiasm the fact of the journey, as a dog greets a man's invitation to take a walk. And he acts in the dog's way too, swinging wide, racing ahead, doubling back, covering many miles of territory that the man never traverses, all in the spirit of inquiry and the zest for truth. He leaves a crazy trail, but he ranges far beyond the genteel old party he walks with and he is usually in a better position to discover a skunk.
-E.B. (Elwyn Brooks) White
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A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
-Thomas Wolfe
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Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
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Books about Liberalism
