Liberalism quotes

The modern State accordingly starts from the basis of an authoritarian order, and the protest against that order, a protest religious, political, economic, social, and ethical, is the historic beginning of Liberalism.

Thus Liberalism appears at first as a criticism, sometimes even as a destructive and revolutionary criticism.

Its negative aspect is for centuries foremost. Its business seems to be not so much to build up as to pull down, to remove obstacles which block human progress, rather than to point the positive goal of endeavour or fashion the fabric of civilization.

Arbitrary government in this form was one of the first objects of attack by the English Parliament in the seventeenth century, and this first liberty of the subject was vindicated by the Petition of Right, and again by the Habeas Corpus Act.

It is significant of much that this first step in liberty should be in reality nothing more nor less than a demand for law.

“Freedom of men under government,” says Locke, summing up one whole chapter of seventeenth-century controversy, “is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made by the legislative power erected in it.”

To put the same point from another side, the first condition of free government is government not by the arbitrary determination of the ruler, but by fixed rules of law, to which the ruler himself is subject.

We draw the important inference that there is no essential antithesis between liberty and law.

On the contrary, law is essential to liberty. Law, of course, restrains the individual; it is therefore opposed to his liberty at a given moment and in a given direction. But, equally, law restrains others from doing with him as they will.

There is no real religion that is not thus drenched in personality; and the more religion is recognized for spiritual the starker the contradiction is felt to be that anyone should seek to impose a religion on another.

Properly regarded, the attempt is not wicked, but impossible.

Yet those sin most against true religion who try to convert men from the outside by mechanical means. They have the lie in the soul, being most ignorant of the nature of that for which they feel most deeply.

It has only to be added here that restrictions of sex are in every respect parallel to restrictions of class. There are, doubtless, occupations for which women are unfit. But, if so, the test of fitness is sufficient to exclude them.

The “open road for women” is one application, and a very big one, of the “open road for talent,” and to secure them both is of the essence of Liberalism.

Apart from monopolies, industry was shackled in the earlier part of the modern period by restrictive legislation in various forms, by navigation laws, and by tariffs.

Under such conditions the most liberally-minded democracy is maintaining a system which must undermine its own principles. The Assyrian conqueror, Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks, who is depicted in the bas-reliefs leading his captive by a cord, is bound with that cord himself.

He forfeits his liberty as long as he retains his power.

Somewhat similar questions arise about race, which many people wrongly confuse with nationality. So far as elementary rights are concerned there can be no question as to the attitude of Liberalism.

In all relations with weaker peoples we move in an atmosphere vitiated by the insincere use of high-sounding words. If men say equality, they mean oppression by forms of justice.

If they say tutelage, they appear to mean the kind of tutelage extended to the fattened goose.

In such an atmosphere, perhaps, our safest course, so far as principles and deductions avail at all, is to fix our eyes on the elements of the matter, and in any part of the world to support whatever method succeeds in securing the “coloured” man …

above all, so far as it may yet be, from the white man himself.

Until the white man has fully learnt to rule his own life, the best of all things that he can do with the dark man is to do nothing with him.

In this relation, the day of a more constructive Liberalism is yet to come.

Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not effected without ideas.

The passions of men must be aroused if the frost of custom is to be broken or the chains of authority burst; but passion of itself is blind and its world is chaotic.

and the philosophies that have driving force behind them are those which arise after this fashion out of the practical demands of human feeling.

The philosophies that remain ineffectual and academic are those that are formed by abstract reflection without relation to the thirsty souls of human kind.

In England, it is true, where men are apt to be shy and unhandy in the region of theory, the Liberal movement has often sought to dispense with general principles.

If, on the other hand, I have no right to injure another, the law should interfere. Very little reflection suffices to show that this is the sounder principle, and that respect for the equal liberty of another is not an adequate definition of liberty.

My right to keep my neighbour awake by playing the piano all night is not satisfactorily counterbalanced by his right to keep a dog which howls all the time the piano is being played.

The right of a “sweater” to pay starvation wages is not satisfactorily limited by the corresponding right which his employee would enjoy if he were in a position to impose the same terms on someone else.

… if there is a rational social order at all it must be one which never rests the essential indispensable condition of the happiness of one man on the unavoidable misery of another, nor the happiness of forty millions of men on the misery of one.

It may be temporarily expedient, but it is eternally unjust, that one man should die for the people.

We may go further. The case of the contemplated tax is, as applied to the politics of a modern State, an unreal one. Political questions cannot be thus isolated.

It gave, upon the whole, far more freedom to the workman than it took away, and in this we learn an important lesson which has far wider application.

In the matter of contract true freedom postulates substantial equality between the parties.

In proportion as one party is in a position of vantage, he is able to dictate his terms. In proportion as the other party is in a weak position, he must accept unfavourable terms.

… within the trade union world itself, that legislation has avowedly undertaken the task of controlling the conditions of industry, the hours, and at length, through the institution of Wages Boards in “sweated industries,” the actual remuneration of working people without limitation of age or sex.

To this it has been driven by the manifest teaching of experience that liberty without equality is a name of noble sound and squalid result.

In place of the system of unfettered agreements between individual and individual which the school of Cobden contemplated, the industrial system which has actually grown up and is in process of further development rests on conditions prescribed by the State, and within the limits of …

That may be, though there are doubtful cases. But in the field that has been in question the contention is that one party is not willing. The bargain is a forced bargain.

The weaker man consents as one slipping over a precipice might consent to give all his fortune to one who will throw him a rope on no other terms.

This is not true consent. True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies equality on the part of both parties to the bargain.

The area of restraint is therefore increased. But, inasmuch as injury inflicted is itself crippling to the sufferer, as it lowers his health, confines his life, cramps his powers, so the prevention of such injury sets him free.

The restraint of the aggressor is the freedom of the sufferer, and only by restraint on the actions by which men injure one another do they as a whole community gain freedom in all courses of conduct that can be pursued without ultimate social disharmony.

It is, therefore, a very shallow wit that taunts contemporary Liberalism with inconsistency in opposing economic protection while it supports protective legislation for the manual labourer.

It may be added that, if cynicism has since appeared to hold the field in international politics, it is the cynicism of terror rather than the cynicism of ambition.

The Scare has superseded the Vision as the moving force in our external relations, and there are now signs that the Scare in turn has spent its force and is making room at last for Sense.

In other respects, Gladstone was a moral rather than an intellectual force. He raised the whole level of public life.

Hence, Mill is the easiest person in the world to convict of inconsistency, incompleteness, and lack of rounded system.

Hence, also, his work will survive the death of many consistent, complete, and perfectly rounded systems.

As a utilitarian, Mill cannot appeal to any rights of the individual that can be set in opposition to the public welfare. His method is to show that the permanent welfare of the public is bound up with the rights of the individual.

Or, in the alternative, no element of truth will appear. In that case the more fully the error is understood, the more patiently it is followed up in all the windings of its implications and consequences, the more thoroughly will it refute itself.

The cancerous growth cannot be extirpated by the knife.

The root is always left, and it is only the evolution of the self-protecting antitoxin that works the final cure. Exactly parallel is the logic of truth.

Nor is it to be identified with tolerance of opposed opinions. The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with toleration, as though they did not matter.

He meets them with justice, and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much as his own.

He is always ready to put his own convictions to the proof, not because he doubts them, but because he believes in them.

The Liberal does not meet opinions which he conceives to be false with toleration, as though they did not matter. He meets them with justice, and exacts for them a fair hearing as though they mattered just as much as his own.

He is always ready to put his own convictions to the proof, not because he doubts them, but because he believes in them.

For, both as to that which he holds for true and as to that which he holds for false, he believes that one final test applies. Let error have free play, and one of two things will happen.

… self-directing power of personality, that it is only on this foundation that a true community can be built, and that so established its foundations are so deep and so wide that there is no limit that we can place to the extent of the building.

Liberty then becomes not so much a right of the individual as a necessity of society.

It rests not on the claim of A to be let alone by B, but on the duty of B to treat A as a rational being.

Liberty then becomes not so much a right of the individual as a necessity of society.

It rests not on the claim of A to be let alone by B, but on the duty of B to treat A as a rational being.

It is not right to let crime alone or to let error alone, but it is imperative to treat the criminal or the mistaken or the ignorant as beings capable of right and truth, and to lead them on instead of merely beating them down.

… be destroyed but cannot be made, which cannot be taken to pieces and repaired, but can be placed under conditions in which it will flourish and expand, or, if it is diseased, under conditions in which it will heal itself by its own recuperative powers.

The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth.

Life is learning, but whether in theory or practice what a man genuinely learns is what he absorbs, and what he absorbs depends on the energy which he himself puts forth in response to his surroundings.

It is natural only in this sense, that it is the expression of deep-seated forces of human nature which come to their own only by an infinitely slow and cumbersome process of mutual adjustment. Every constructive social doctrine rests on the conception of human progress.

The heart of Liberalism is the understanding that progress is not a matter of mechanical contrivance, but of the liberation of living spiritual energy.

Good mechanism is that which provides the channels wherein such energy can flow unimpeded, unobstructed by its own exuberance of output, vivifying the social structure, expanding and ennobling the life of mind.

The difficulty is founded on the nature of the good itself, which on its personal side depends on the spontaneous flow of feeling checked and guided not by external restraint but by rational self-control.

To try to form character by coercion is to destroy it in the making.

Personality is not built up from without but grows from within, and the function of the outer order is not to create it, but to provide for it the most suitable conditions of growth.

The limit to the value of coercion thus lies not in the restriction of social purpose, but in the conditions of personal life.

No force can compel growth.

Whatever elements of social value depend on the accord of feeling, on comprehension of meaning, on the assent of will, must come through liberty. Here is the sphere and function of liberty in the social harmony.

… movement of general will in the sphere in which it is really efficient, and nothing in a just conception of the objects and methods of the general will to curtail liberty in the performance of the functions, social and personal, in which its value lies.

Liberty and compulsion have complementary functions, and the self-governing State is at once the product and the condition of the self-governing individual.

Thus there is no difficulty in understanding why the extension of State control on one side goes along with determined resistance to encroachments on another. It is a question not of increasing or diminishing, but of reorganizing, restraints.

But the essence of government lies in the method of capture. The ostensible leaders of democracy are ignorant creatures who can with a little management be set to walk in the way in which they should go, and whom the crowd will follow like sheep.

The art of governing consists in making men do what you wish without knowing what they are doing, to lead them on without showing them whither until it is too late for them to retrace their steps.

Socialism so conceived has in essentials nothing to do with democracy or with liberty.

He would rather marry the woman of his own choice, than the one who would be sure to bring forth children of the standard type.

He does not want to be standardized.

He does not conceive himself as essentially an item in a census return. He does not want the standard clothes or the standard food, he wants the clothes which he finds comfortable and the food which he likes.

He would rather marry the woman of his own choice, than the one who would be sure to bring forth children of the standard type. He does not want to be standardized.

He does not conceive himself as essentially an item in a census return.

He does not want the standard clothes or the standard food, he wants the clothes which he finds comfortable and the food which he likes.

He would have greater security, a brighter outlook, a more confident hope of being able to keep his head above water.

The experience of life suggests that hope is a better stimulus than fear, confidence a better mental environment than insecurity.

If desperation will sometimes spur men to exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health.

It is a compensation for misfortune which easily slides into an encouragement to carelessness. What is matter of right, on the other hand, is enjoyed equally by the successful and the unsuccessful.

It is not a handicap in favour of the one, but an equal distance deducted from the race to be run against fate by both.

This brings us to the real question. Are measures of the kind under discussion to be regarded as measures of philanthropy or measures of justice, as the expression of collective benevolence or as the recognition of a general right?

When taxation, based on these principles, is utilized to secure healthy conditions of existence to the mass of the people it is clear that this is no case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Peter is not robbed. Apart from the tax it is he who would be robbing the State.

A tax which enables the State to secure a certain share of social value is not something deducted from that which the taxpayer has an unlimited right to call his own, but rather a repayment of something which was all along due to society.

… expenditure is that the prevention of suffering from the actual lack of adequate physical comforts is an essential element in the common good, an object in which all are bound to concern themselves, which all have the right to demand and the duty to fulfil.

Any common life based on the avoidable suffering even of one of those who partake in it is a life not of harmony, but of discord.

But we can go further. We said at the outset that the function of society was to secure to all normal adult members the means of earning by useful work the material necessaries of a healthy and efficient life.

… State is vested with a certain overlordship over property in general and a supervisory power over industry in general, and this principle of economic sovereignty may be set side by side with that of economic justice as a no less fundamental conception of economic Liberalism.

For here, as elsewhere, liberty implies control.

But the manner in which the State is to exercise its controlling power is to be learnt by experience and even in large measure by cautious experiment.

By keeping to the conception of harmony as our clue we constantly define the rights of the individual in terms of the common good, and think of the common good in terms of the welfare of all the individuals who constitute a society.

Thus in economics we avoid the confusion of liberty with competition, and see no virtue in the right of a man to get the better of others.

At the same time we are not led to minimize the share of personal initiative, talent, or energy in production, but are free to contend for their claim to adequate recognition.

The nineteenth century might be called the age of Liberalism, yet its close saw the fortunes of that great movement brought to their lowest ebb.

Whether at home or abroad those who represented Liberal ideas had suffered crushing defeats. But this was the least considerable of the causes for anxiety. If Liberals had been defeated, something much worse seemed about to befall Liberalism. Its faith in itself was waxing cold.

On the other hand, in the Liberal ranks many of the most influential men had passed, without consciousness of the transition, under the sway of quite opposite influences.

They were becoming Imperialists in their sleep, and it was only as the implications of Imperialism became evident that they were awakened.

It was with the outbreak of the South African War that the new development of Conservative policy first compelled the average Liberal to consider his position. It needed the shock of an outspoken violation of right to stir him;

… have to realize that within wide limits the judges are in effect legislators, and legislators with a certain persistent bent which can be held in check only by the constant vigilance and repeated efforts of the recognized organ for the making and repeal of law.

In destroying the old position of the Trade Unions, the judges created the modern Labour party and cemented its alliance with Liberalism.

Meanwhile, the aftermath of Imperialism in South Africa was reaped, and Conservative disillusionment unlocked the floodgates for the advancing tide of the Liberal revival.

What we possess has its intrinsic value, but how we came to possess it is also an important question. It is so with a society.

Good government is much, but the good will is more, and even the imperfect, halting, confused utterance of the common will may have in it the potency of higher things than a perfection of machinery can ever attain.

But this principle makes one very large assumption. It postulates the existence of a common will.

At the same time, the remnant, be it never so select, has always much to learn.

Some men are much better and wiser than others, but experience seems to show that hardly any man is so much better or wiser than others that he can permanently stand the test of irresponsible power over them.

On the contrary, the best and wisest is he who is ready to go to the humblest in a spirit of inquiry, to find out what he wants and why he wants it before seeking to legislate for him.

Through these interests, again, he comes into touch with wider questions—with a Factory Bill or an Education Bill—and in dealing with these questions he will now act as one of an organized body, whose combined voting strength will be no negligible quantity.

Responsibility comes home to him, and to bring home responsibility is the problem of all government.

The development of social interest—and that is democracy—depends not only on adult suffrage and the supremacy of the elected legislature, but on all the intermediate organizations which link the individual to the whole.

The success of democracy depends on the response of the voters to the opportunities given them. But, conversely, the opportunities must be given in order to call forth the response.

The exercise of popular government is itself an education.

In considering whether any class or sex or race should be brought into the circle of enfranchisement, the determining consideration is the response which that class or sex or race would be likely to make to the trust.

So among ourselves does the press constantly represent public opinion to be one thing while the cold arithmetic of the polls conclusively declares it to be another.

The ballot alone effectively liberates the quiet citizen from the tyranny of the shouter and the wire-puller.

I conclude that an impression of existing inertness or ignorance is not a sufficient reason for withholding responsible government or restricting the area of the suffrage.