quotations about liberals
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
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
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
ROBERT ANTON WILSON
The Illuminati Papers
Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective. It is a corrosive which eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of compact organization and strict discipline, prevents policies from being carried through and alienates the Party organizations from the masses which the Party leads. It is an extremely bad tendency.
MAO ZEDONG
"Combat Liberalism", Sep. 7, 1937
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
Liberal -- a power worshipper without power.
GEORGE ORWELL
"Politics and the English Language", Shooting an Elephant
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
From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It's just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we're gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can't tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from 'em, don't let 'em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 2011
Liberalism is a belief in radical change made through practical measures.
ADAM GOPNIK
"Liberal-in-Chief", The New Yorker, May 23, 2016
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
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
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
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 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
A liberal is a socialist with a wife and two children.
ANONYMOUS
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
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
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
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
The only way liberals win national elections is by pretending they're not liberals.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
"35 Undeniable Truths of Life"