Quotes about liberals

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

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

If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments -- we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

— Malcolm Bradbury

The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.

— Lenny Bruce

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

A liberal is man who will give away everything he doesn't own.

— Frank Dane

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

Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.

— Benjamin Disraeli

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

A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel.

— Robert Frost

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.

— Jose Ortega Y Gasset

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else's money.

— Carter Glass

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

Liberalism, above all, means emancipation -- emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination... from poverty.

— Hubert H. Humphrey

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.

— King Jr. Martin Luther

Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Left-wingers are incapable of conspiring because they are all egomaniacs.

— Norman Mailer

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

The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building.

— Benito Mussolini

A liberal is a man who is right most of the time, but he's right too soon.

— Gregory Nunn

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

A liberal is a power worshipper without the power.

— George Orwell

When anything goes, it's women who lose.

— Camille Paglia

A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal.

— American Proverb

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

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?

— Barbara Streisand

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.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

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

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

— Source Unknown

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.

— Elwyn Brooks White

A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.

— Thomas Wolfe

Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?

— Yevgeny Yevtushenko

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

— Robert Frost