Political Liberalism Quotes

The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from persons, from personal dominion, from the master; the securing of each individual person against other persons, personal freedom.

As long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period... Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression - and this is valid for South America - is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government.

I'd never get elected if people in North Carolina realized how liberal I am.

I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it.

All my life I have prayed to God that I should remain religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal and economically pragmatic.

I am half-surprised to find that as I go on I get more and more confirmed in the old advanced Liberal principles, economic, social, and political, with which I entered Parliament 30 years ago.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

I well remember a leading Egyptian liberal saying to me in 2003 that she did not favor free elections right then in Egypt; she favored them in a decade's time if she and others had those 10 years to organize freely.

It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

I was 25 years old and pursuing my doctorate in economics when I was allowed to spend six months of postgraduate studies in Naples, Italy. I read the Western economic textbooks and also the more general work of people like Hayek. By the time I returned to Czechoslovakia, I had an understanding of the principles of the market. In 1968, I was glad at the political liberalism of the Dubcek Prague Spring, but I was very critical of the Third Way they pursued in economics.

I worked in the media from the late 30's through the early 70's. Politics in general became more liberal both nationally and within the state as the years passed.

As Eric Weitz argues, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was not responsible for the Reich; it was a democratic, socially aware and progressive government, way ahead of many other European governments in its introduction of workers' rights, public housing, unemployment benefit and suffrage for women.

I am not a post-liberal and I do not think that such a return to full 19th-century anticlericalism inevitable or even likely - which is one reason among many that I doubt the bargain many religious conservatives have made with Donald Trump.

Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.