Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. William F Buckley junior
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. Robert Frost
Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it. Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
Reality has a well-known liberal bias. Stephen Colbert, White House correspondents' association dinner 2006
I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845
It came to me a little while ago what we really are, we liberals. We demand reforms, we want to improve the situation of the underprivileged – why? To make them better off materially? Nuts. It’s only to make ourselves feel less guilty. We rend our garments, we’re eager to show how willing we are to accept any outrageous demand so long as its black, or youthful, or put up by someone who thinks he’s got a grievance. We want to appease everybody – you know what a liberal is? A liberal is a guy who walks out of the room when the fight starts. Brian Garfield, Death Wish, 1972
New Deal liberalism broke with progressivism in many if not most respects. Progressives wanted technocratic economic planning. By the 1940s, New Dealers dropped planning for Keynesianism. Most progressives were nativists who supported immigration restriction on ethnic or cultural grounds. New Deal liberals celebrated the melting pot and liberalized American immigration laws in the 1960s. Woodrow Wilson resegregated Washington. Lyndon B Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Franklin D Roosevelt created Social Security and Johnson created Medicare. Wilson opposed national health insurance. Michael Lind, article Salon April 2010, ‘Glenn Beck’s Partisan Historians’
A liberal is a person whose interests aren’t at stake at the moment. Willis Player, Potomac magazine 15th November 1972
Liberalism is a mental disorder. Michael Savage, 2005
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. John F Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
I must add ... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot
A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Liberalism is a scourge. It destroys the human spirit. It destroys prosperity. It assigns sameness to everybody. And wherever I find it, I oppose it. Rush Limbaugh, interview Playboy magazine
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state ...
The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D Thoreau
Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. Thomas Sowell
They’re building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia. George C Wallace
Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society – owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity – to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family – the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Started as a small-town solicitor in north Wales … earning himself the title ‘The man who won the War.’ Dan Snow on Lloyd George, BBC 2017
A controversial figure … He was slippery, devious, and involved in financial scandals that today would ruin any political career. He was a serial womaniser. ibid.
All the things I’ve achieved in my long and distinguished political career … Spitting Image s4e5, David Steel recites his memoirs, ITV 1987
Colleagues, the first thing we’ve got to do is to come up with a name for the new merged party, and come up with a constitution. Spitting Image s4e6
Liberals love America like O J loved Nicole. Ann Coulter
Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots. Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter: You will find liberals always rooting for savages against civilization.
Bill O’Reilly: They didn’t root for the Nazis against civilization.
Coulter: Oh yes they did … It was only when Hitler invaded their precious Soviet Union that at the last minute they came in and suddenly started saying, Oh no, now you have to fight Hitler. The O’Reilly Factor 7th May 2010
The term neoliberalism suggests a system of principles that is in the first place not new and in the second place based on classical liberal ideas … also called the Washington Consensus. Noam Chomsky, lecture Yale University 25th February 1997, ‘Neoliberalism and the Global Order’, Youtube 1.09.54
Libertarian means extreme capitalist. ibid.
It’s hardly a great surprise now, is it? A Very English Scandal, Thorpe at lunch, opening scene, BBC 2018
At last, someone to protect me from myself. ibid.
When I first met him, he was very heaven. ibid.
The heterosexual man is so relentless in his attack. ibid. peer to MP
There’s only one thing we can do. Kill him. ibid.
Is he dead? A Very English Scandal e2, Thorpe
Who knows where time and tide will take us. ibid.
I think I’ve been cursed. ibid. Scott
I was Jeremy Thorpe’s lover. ibid. scandal hits headlines