Liberal quotes.

[ccharles000]

What are your favorite liberal quotes.

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

A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.-Jacques Barzun

A radical thinks two and two makes five. A liberal is more conservative. he knows two and two make four, but he's unhappy about it.-Herbert Prochnow

[Happy Little ELF]

1. “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”- Ed Abbey

"Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”

"Grown men do not need leaders.”
All of these from Edward Abbey

[Dhalgren]

2. Here is the one I like best:

"A Liberal is a man afraid of losing his privileges. A Conservative is a man afraid OF his privileges."

[stillcool]

3. These are not 'liberal' quotes...

but they are some of my favorites

“A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.” ---Paul Wellstone

“The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The
future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who
believe in the beauty of their dreams.”---Paul Wellstone


"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
-- Thomas Jefferson


"Democracy is no easy form of government. Few nations have been able to sustain it. For it requires that we take the chances of freedom; that the liberating play of reason be brought to bear on events filled with passion; that dissent be allowed to make its appeal for acceptance; that men chance error in their search for the truth."-- Robert F. Kennedy


"The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality .... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse."--- Mark Twain

[denverbill]

4. Adam Smith is great, because conservatives love to quote him.

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy when part of the members are poor and miserable."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
-- Adam Smith, Wealth Of Nations

[Tyler Durden]

5. Notice those Pre-Socialist, liberal type quotes come from the man who defined capitalism.

I always love using those quotes when someone starts talking "Free Market Capitalism" to me.

[marmar]

6. One of my faves:

"Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear."

-W E Gladstone

[deadmessengers]

7. JFK

John F. Kennedy

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then ... we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

[Harry Monroe]

8. Also not really "liberal" quotes, but relevant just the same

“It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error, but rather it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error”
Justice Robert H. Jackson

“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
James Madison

“History furnishes no example of priest ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes”
Thomas Jefferson

“A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake”
Thomas Jefferson, June 4, 1798, in a letter to John Taylor after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts

“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to Farce or Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives”
James Madison


"Thomas Jefferson taught that a democracy was impractical unless the people were educated. No matter how stringent the protections of the people might be in constitutions or common law, there would always be a temptation, Jefferson thought, for the powerful, the wealthy, and the unscrupulous to undermine the ideal of govermnent run by and for ordinary citizens. The antidote is vigorous support for the expression of unpopular views, widespread literacy, substantive debate, a common familiarity with critical thinking, and skepticism of pronouncements of those in authority - which are all also central to the scientific method"

Excerpt from Carl Sagan's book, "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium"

[stillcool]

9. I really like those last three...

not only do words matter, they last forever.

[Winterblues]

10. "Question Authority"

My favorite......

[Solon]

11. Some Quotes...

"It was wonderful to find America, it would have been more wonderful to miss it."

-Mark Twain.

"It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind."

-Voltaire

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

-George Bernard Shaw

"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."

-George Jean Nathan