LIBERALS QUOTES III

quotations about liberals

Uprisings against that ossifying version of New Deal liberalism made the '60s "The Sixties." Political emotions were at a fever pitch as rebels faced off against a liberal "establishment." Matters sometimes became so overheated they threatened to melt the surface of public life. And yet here was a question that, no matter the temperature, was tough to raise at the time: What if liberalism wasn't the problem? Admittedly, that thought was in the air then, raised not just by new and old lefties, but by Martin Luther King Jr., who famously enunciated his second thoughts about capitalism, poverty, race, and war.

STEVE FRASER

"Liberalism Is Under Attack From the Left and the Right", The Nation, June 2, 2016


As a reformer the liberal is dissatisfied with things as they are because they violate his exceptionally tender conscience.... Liberalism does not advocate change for its own sake, but for the sake of something better in the direction of what he regards as good, namely, the maximum of liberty consistent with a regard for all men and all interests -- the general happiness based on peace and justice.

RALPH BARTON PERRY

Characteristically American


What Americans call "liberalism" is the ideology of Western suicide.

JAMES BURNHAM

Suicide of the West


The Eighties proved we don't need liberals.

RUSH LIMBAUGH

interview, Playboy, Nov. 2011

Tags: Rush Limbaugh


The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

speech, Sep. 29, 1936

Tags: Franklin D. Roosevelt


Most liberals never lost sight of the potential for evil in big government. They have consistently opposed government power in matters of personal and political belief. Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom.

ROBERT S. MCELVAINE

The End of the Conservative Era


The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o' clock and the Conservatives at eight.

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tags: Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it.

RUSH LIMBAUGH

interview, Playboy


Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.

RUSH LIMBAUGH

attributed, The Nastiest Things Ever Said about Democrats


Liberalism is a belief in radical change made through practical measures.

ADAM GOPNIK

"Liberal-in-Chief", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016


It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

ROBERT ANTON WILSON

The Illuminati Papers


Liberalism itself, is, on all matters connected with Church and Education, only a kind of corporate and "respectable" ungodliness.

HENRY PARRY LIDDON

letter to C. T. Redington, January 13, 1879

Tags: Henry Parry Liddon


Nowadays, what is meant by "liberalism" is progressivism, socialism, the welfare state, statism; systems that American conservatives lump together as "Big Government."

JON N. HALL

"What's Wrong with Europe", American Thinker, June 1, 2016


Liberal -- a power worshipper without power.

GEORGE ORWELL

"Politics and the English Language", Shooting an Elephant

Tags: George Orwell


Ever since Richard Nixon walloped George McGovern in the presidential election of 1972, political pundits have treated as a truism the proposition that liberals are out of step with the rest of the nation, and therefore all but unelectable outside the precincts of the Northeast -- give or take a college town here or a ski resort there. During the course of every presidential election for the past forty years now, Republicans have sought to wield the word liberal as if it were a six-gauge shotgun.

ERIC ALTERMAN

Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America


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

speech to House of Commons, Jun. 5, 1848

Tags: Benjamin Disraeli


A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children.

ANONYMOUS


Many people ... prefer to describe themselves as progressives rather than liberals. To some extent that's a response to the decades-long propaganda campaign conducted by movement conservatives, which has been quite successful in making Americans disdain the word liberal but much less successful in reducing support for liberal policies.

PAUL KRUGMAN

The Conscience of a Liberal

Tags: Paul Krugman


Liberalism is to freedom as anarchism is to anarchy.

ERNST JUNGER

Eumeswil


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

The Worst Years of Our Lives

Tags: Barbara Ehrenreich