quotations about liberals
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
Liberalism is not therapeutic. You don't listen to others to make them feel better. You listen because without their cooperation, or at least their tacit acceptance of the moral urgency of change, that long arc won't bend and progress won't happen. Your opponents have to understand that reform, even if it makes their fixations unsustainable, will not make their lives unlivable. Freedom didn't happen because your opponents saw the light. It happened because they no longer found it necessary to live in the dark. Their hands may never move toward a candle, but their eyes adjust. Allowing for the adjustment and the time that it takes is part of the intelligence of politics.
ADAM GOPNIK
"Liberal-in-Chief", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016
Liberalism is dead, so dead that Democrats have all become moderate Republicans, and the heavy hand of Big Government is now limp and damp and trembly.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Time Magazine, April 2, 1996
Liberalism ... is the most truly radical of ideologies, inasmuch as it proposes a change, makes it happen, and then makes it last. Someone proposes a more equitable world--the enfranchisement of working people, or of African-Americans, or of women, or marital rights for homosexuals--and then makes it endure by assuring those who oppose it that, while they may have lost the fight, they haven't lost their dignity, their autonomy, or their chance to adapt to the change without fearing the loss of all their agency.
ADAM GOPNIK
"Liberal-in-Chief", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016
Though I believe in liberalism, I find it difficult to believe in liberals.
G. K. CHESTERTON
attributed, The Offensive Art: Political Satire and Its Censorship
Liberalism is the wolf on the sled dog team.
SUSAN STAMPER BROWN
"Liberalism is the wolf on the sled dog team", Casper Star Tribune, May 16, 2016
Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind... I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it's outrageous to say "The L word". I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group.
LAUREN BACALL
Larry King Live, May 6, 2005
The Republican Party either corrupts its liberals or it expels them.
HARRY TRUMAN
attributed, Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents
Conservatives want to make the poor rich, while liberals want to make the rich poor.
MARK W. SMITH
The Official Handbook of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
"35 Undeniable Truths of Life"
What health is to the animal, Liberalism is to the polity. It is a principle of fermenting enjoyment, running over all the nerves, inspiring the frame, happy in its mind, easy in its place, glad to behold the sun.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Begun mainly in the experiments of the 1960s, modern liberal thought adventures have far surpassed the breadth of Western Civilization's four other great mental prison breaks: ancient Greece, the Judeo-Christian ethical revolution, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. In addition, three of these brain gains reached only a few thousand intellectuals. Thanks to modern media, the brain break of the '60s reached billions.
BILL BRANYON
Liberating Liberals
The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
LENNY BRUCE
"Politics", The Essential Lenny Bruce
If liberalism has grown so weak and ineffective, why does it evoke such alarm on the part of conservatives? It turns out that while liberals are weak and spineless, they are also sneaky and clever.
ERIC ALTERMAN
Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America
The Liberal party is held together, not by forces within, but by a force above it. It consists, like the being that declined a chair, of two wings and a head.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, July 10, 1880