Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes

Liberalism! This is the slogan of every educated and sober-minded person in Russia. This is the banner which can unite about it people of all spheres, all estates, all inclinations. This is the word which can mold a powerful public opinion, if only we can shake off from ourselves self-destructive laziness and indifference to the common cause.

The worst enemy of the new radicals are the old liberals.

Liberalism is the answer for which modernity is the question

A liberal is a person who kept an open mind … a person who did not always look backward but would look forward to new possible solutions.

What I have been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.

The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production... All the other demands of liberalism result from his fundamental demand.

With capitalism and prosperity came something new: the idea of progress. This is the notion that things are getting better and will continue to get better in the future.

If Jesus was alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.

What is surprising is that their ideological opponents, the Marxists - the anti-liberals, the representatives of the oppressed working classes - believed in progress with at least as much passion as the liberals.

There has been a religious revival because - let me put it like this, the people that weren't traditionally religious, conventionally religious, had a religion of their own in my youth. These were liberals who believed in the idea of progress or they were Marxists. Both of these secular religions have broken down.

The revolution that's required isn't a revolution of radical ideas, but the implementation of ideas we already have.

This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward a time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those of our Revolutionary ancestors.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.

I talked a lot early on in my career about intersectionality and how racism and classism and sexism and homophobia and capitalism are all connected with each other, and they're these crazy systems that are feeding on each other and are also damaging. I can't even go into the whole spectrum of it. But I feel like kids today are so much more savvy about that conversation. And I'm so thrilled when I get to meet younger people who are doing that so much better than I did.

Liberals have managed to eliminate the idea of manly honor. Instead, all they have is womanly indignation.

The civil liberty of every mode of worship, and full power given to all of openly and publicly manifesting their opinions and their ideas conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people... The Roman Pontiff cannot and ought not to reconcile himself or agree with, progress, liberalism and modern civilization.

Held in the palms of thousands of disgruntled people over the centuries have been ideas worth millions - if they only had taken the first step and then followed through.

. . I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day.

Throughout history, people with new ideas—who think differently and try to change things—have always been called troublemakers.

Progress of any kind is always at variance with the old and established ideas and therefore with the codes inspired by them. Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.