Liberals have a long history of bettering this country – and leading it better (than the opposition). When it comes to having a coherent and compelling philosophy, progressives suck. We fight amongst ourselves, equivocate, cower, and are even afraid to proudly use the word liberal. However, as Eric Alterman points out in his great book Why We’re Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America’s Most Important Ideals, progressive politicians provide superior leadership, have more integrity, and speak for the ideals held by most Americans, by and large. This blog features many compelling and unique quotes by famous progressives.
Historian John Lukacs defined liberal as “generosity – nay, magnanimity; not only breadth of mind but strength of soul.” The Oxford English Dictionary includes as part of its definition, a person “free from narrow prejudice.” Is liberalism therefore purely positive, well-regarded, and held in honor? Do not earning women the right to vote, leading the civil rights struggle, getting us through the Great Depression and World War II, and fostering a massive expansion of the middle class from 1946-1970 sound worthy and laudable?
“And yet to judge merely by the titles that pop up on a search of Amazon.com, to be a self-confessed ‘liberal’…is to place oneself literally in the rhetorical company of pedophiles, axe murderers, and mass murders,” reports Alterman. But screw Anne Coulter, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh! I can deal with John McCain and Susan Collins and Andrew Sullivan, but I say to hell with Donald Trump, Jamie Dimon, Reince Priebus, and Mitch McConnell. They are all schemers and weasels who feather their own nests at the expense of the country. Progressive Americans have pulled America forward (sometimes kicking and screaming!) through the centuries, such as in the Civil Rights Era. It is something to be proud of. But don’t take my word for it, here are a couple dozen quotes by famous progressives:
“A liberal is a man who wants to build bridges over the chasms that separate humanity from a better life.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Trump’s true purpose in life is to have everyone talking about him, looking at him, reacting to him. If it’s negative attention, so be it. Trump’s Reality Show House has been an unstoppable force, dominating our attention, coarsening our politics, making us angrier and more afraid and more distant from each other. …In owning our attention, Trump makes us a little more like him, and politics a little more like the tribal clash he says it is.” ~ Ezra Klein
“Liberals are well-positioned to lead America out of its current morass. The harsh lessons of the past 40 years of defeat and disappointment have forced a return to the most pragmatic aspects of a political philosophy that, after all, inspired America’s founders to invent this nation.” ~ Eric Alterman
“Illiberal left ideology has its greatest strength on campuses because campuses are one of the few places in American life where a certain kind of far-left politics can actually impose hegemony on other ideas and really control the discourse in a way it can’t in most places in American life where even moderate liberals are more of a minority.” ~ Jonathan Chait
“Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event. If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.” ~ Michael Moore
“I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.” ~ Bill Maher
“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.” ~ Susan Sontag
“Charity provides crumbs from the table; justice offers a place at the table.” ~ Bill Moyers
You are reading quotes by famous progressives on ValuesoftheWise.com
“The first blame for September 11 was put squarely on liberals. When some liberals questioned the confluence of events that resulted in our vulnerability to terrorism, certain Americans who should know better have branded us as some kind of anti-American treason lobby.”
“Governments can enhance growth by increasing inclusiveness. A country’s most valuable resource is its people. So it is essential to ensure that everyone can live up to their potential, which requires educational opportunities for all.” ~ Joseph Stiglitz
“The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines ‘liberal’ in this way: ‘Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behaviors of others; broad-minded.’ I’ve always seen it as an ethos in which possibility gets way out in front of reality and takes a flying leap.”
“The most valuable thing a teacher can impart to children is not knowledge and understanding per se but a longing for knowledge and understanding, and an appreciation for intellectual values, whether they be artistic, scientific, or moral. It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. Most teachers waste their time by asking questions that are intended to discover what a pupil does not know, whereas the true art of questioning is to discover what the pupil does know or is capable of knowing.” ~ Albert Einstein
“Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
You are reading quotes by famous progressives on ValuesoftheWise.com
“Under Republican presidents since 1960, the federal deficit has averaged $131 billion a year. Under Democrats, that figure is $30 billion. In an average Republican year, the deficit has grown by $36 billion. In the average Democratic year, it has shrunk by $25 billion. The national debt has gone up more than $200 billion a year under Republican presidents and less than $100 billion a year under Democrats. If you start counting in 1981 or attribute responsibility with a year’s delay, the numbers change but the bottom line doesn’t: Democrats do Republican economics better than Republicans do.” ~ Michael Kinsley
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
“The colors of our skins, the languages of our cultural and native origins, the lack of our formal education, the exclusion from the democratic process, the numbers of our men slain in recent wars—through all these burdens generation after generation have sought to demoralize us, to break our human spirit. But God knows that we are not beasts of burden, agricultural implements or rented slaves; we are men.”
“When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” ~ Susan Sarandon
“The reason Democrats have pulled their punches with the financial sector for years is because it’s hard to punch the hand that feeds you.”
You are reading quotes by famous progressives on ValuesoftheWise.com
“In sorting out my feelings and beliefs, there is, however, one piece of moral ground of which I am absolutely certain: if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government – which can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.” ~ Helen Prejean
“Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives.” ~ Paul Wellstone
“The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history.”
“Every original thinker today is urging a rethinking of the entire system, a retooling of the corporate imagination and the organizational mind so that the products and processes we develop and export around the world support growth, not just financially, but personally, socially, and spiritually.”
“We have in this country sufficient amounts of money to put more people in jail than any other country on earth. The United States has more people in jail than China; a communist authoritarian country. But apparently we do not have enough money to provide jobs and education to our young people.”
“We want the laws enforced against rich as well as poor; against capitalist as well as laborer; against white as well as black. We are not more lawless than the white race. We are more often arrested, convicted, and mobbed.”
You are reading quotes by famous progressives on ValuesoftheWise.com
“Liberalism is the natural political philosophy of our nation because it represents and encourages what is both good and great in all of us. It embraces freedom of thought rather than ideologically- or theologically-imposed certainty. It inspires the spirit of discovery in science and technology. It embraces the idea of teamwork through its commitment to the common good, which allows us to make the best use of the wisdom of the many while at the same time respecting the sanctity of the rights and talents of the individual.” ~ Eric Alterman
“The story of the Republican Party is of a far-right that has moved from the fringes of the party to a complete domination of the party. The moderate, mainstream and pragmatic leaders of the party have been pushed out or died off.” ~ Jonathan Chait
“We scorch the earth, set fire to the sky; We stoop so low, to reach so high.”
“Take away the career and the higher education, and maybe what you’re left with is this original Barb, the one who might have ended up working at Wal-Mart for real if her father hadn’t managed to climb out of the mines.”
“I believe in a tax code that we need to make more fair. I believe in universal health care. I believe in making college affordable. I believe in paying our teachers more money. I believe in early childhood education. I believe in a whole lot of things that make me progressive.”
“It is sometimes difficult for progressives to understand just how inherently threatening our message can be to those whose sense of identity depends on clinging to their position in the collapsing hierarchy of power and privilege.”
If you liked these quotes by famous progressives, click HERE. It’s the world’s best quotation database for quotes about progressivism, liberalism, politics, economics, and personal growth. That link is cued up to search for the word liberal, but you can search for any keyword or author you want!
Look around here, or join them. You might even find some quotes by famous progressives.
