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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
