Zanny Minton Beddoes Quotes

Classical liberalism is the idea that individual freedom and limited government are the best way for humans to form a free society.

I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

I'm a classic English liberal. A classical liberal, which is different to the modern interpretation of liberal in America.

Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism - with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church.

The program of liberalism if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production.

It is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?

We recommend a planned public relations and publicity campaign to position the Republican party as the defender of individual liberties against the encroachment of socialism, paternalism, and government control.

Free Minds—Free Markets

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

I'm a classical liberal. A free thinker.

Conserving the individual is the basis of conservatism. It is classical, de Tocqueville liberalism.

Firstly, I think the values that underpin all liberals, frankly - classical liberals, all liberals - of respect for the individual and freedom are worth fighting for.

Classic English liberalism of the sort that 'The Economist' was founded to champion and still espouses is about open societies and free markets.

I have been a libertarian in my past but now I consider myself a classical liberal.

The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

I use throughout the term 'liberal' in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control.

All the general propositions favouring freedom I had .. imbibed at my father's knee or acquired by candle-end reading of Burke and Hayek...

For liberty to expand, government must shrink. For the economy to grow, government must get out of the way.

Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic.

The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal.

In the United States, where it has become almost impossible to use "liberal" in the sense in which I have used it, the term "libertarian" has been used instead. It may be the answer; but for my part I find it singularly unattractive. For my taste it carries too much the flavor of a manufactured term and of a substitute. What I should want is a word which describes the party of life, the party that favors free growth and spontaneous evolution. But I have racked my brain unsuccessfully to find a descriptive term which commends itself.

Liberalism is a series of grievances in addition to everything else that it is.

When you as an American have freedom, the freedom encompasses a lot of things, including the right to do dumb stuff, to do destructive things. You have that right, and liberals somehow, for some reason want to just take control of every aspect of your life as possible, and every time you accede to letting them have it, or big government - you're just letting them have more and more control over your life. Where do you stop that? What's wrong with people regulating themselves? Where did that vanish to?

Life in a free society...is heaven on earth to life in a socialist society such as Russia.