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L Quotes

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All L Quotes

“Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property. Religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state.”

“Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful, limits itself and attempts, even at ist own expense, to leave room in the state over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority.”

“Liberalism is the party of upstarts who have insinuated themselves between the people and its big men. Liberals feel themselves as isolated individuals, responsible to nobody. They do not share the nation’s traditions, they are indifferent to its past and have no ambition for its future. They seek only their own personal advantage in the present. Their dream is the great International, in which the differences of peoples and languages, races and cultures will be obliterated.”

“Liberalism is unsustainable. When things go wrong in liberalism they pile more liberalism on top. Pretty good example of what's wrong with the US budget, US healthcare. Liberalism breaks it. Government breaks it. They pile more liberalism on top of it until it eventually implodes, like Obamacare is going to, or like Social Security is going to. All of these things, they're not sustainable, because liberalism isn't.”

“Liberalism is, in fact, the ideology of the capitalist revolution that prodigiously raised the living standards of the mass of people; a doctrine gradually elaborated over several centuries, which offered a new concept of social order, encompassing freedom in the only form suited to the modern world. Step by step, in practice and theory, the various sectors of human activity were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of coercive authority and given over to the voluntary action of self-regulating society.”

“Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.”

“Liberalism postulated the rational and 'progressive' evolutionary nature of the historical process. Besides success it upheld pragmatism, tolerance and compromise as the principal political virtues. At the core of the liberal outlook stood the 'idea of limits'. It abhorred excess and extremism; it believed that 'absolutist' thought of any sort assured at least failure if not perdition. All problems were seen as soluble with the application of reason; and reason, Liberals believed, ultimately did prevail. Reason, in fact, suffused all and was identified with reality.”

“Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy […] was to rejoice in the virtuous Jills and Jacks, the neighborhood butchers, bakers and brewers, so as to defend the vile East India Companies, the Facebooks, the Amazons, which know no neighbors, have no partners, respect no moral sentiments [the other book by Adam Smith] and stop at nothing to destroy their competitors.”

“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.”

“Liberalism's key principle is to redistribute wealth from the haves to the have nots. That takes money from the entities with the greatest potential to improve society (for example, corporations that create jobs, invent life-saving medicines, etc.) and redistributes it to the people, whom on average, will never contribute more to society than to hold a menial job.”

“Liberalism, conservatism, that's irrelevant stuff to Trump. He looks at things in an entirely different way. This is a reason why we, as conservatives, have to remain vigilant as we can to the ideological component of what's going on here, because as it succeeds, we need to be able to tell people why it's working and at the same time be able to contrast and say why it didn't work when the liberals ran the show. This is an ongoing effort.”

“Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons.”

“Liberalni filozofowie, z pozoru indywidualiści, byli prawdziwymi kolektywistami w tym sensie, że bronili interesów wielu jednostek, a nie tylko praw wąskiej grupy uprzywilejowanych, gdy tymczasem protagoniści ideologii kolektywistycznych (o orientacji czy to narodowej czy klasowej) zajmowali się głównie usprawiedliwianiem prawa nielicznych wybrańców do poświęcania dla własnych celów (definiowanych jako dobro wspólne) wielkiej liczby bezsilnych ludzi" (Czarnoksięstwo w naukach społecznych, s. 189)”