37 Quotes About Progressivism

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners. Eric Hobsbawm

Encouraged by her parents’ applause, the girl went on: “Do you think we take off our tops to give you pleasure? We do it for ourselves, because we like it, because it feels better, because it brings our bodies nearer to the sun! You’re only capable of seeing us as sex objects! ” Again Papa and Mama Clevis applauded, but this time their bravos had a somewhat different tone. Their daughter’s words were indeed right, but also somewhat inappropriate for a fourteen-year-old. It was like an eight-year-old boy saying: “If there’s a holdup, Mama, I’ll defend you.” Then too the parents applaud, because their son’s statement is clearly praiseworthy. But since it also shows excessive self-assurance, the praise is rightly shaded by a certain smile. With such a smile the Clevis parents had tinged their second bravos, and their daughter, who had heard that smile in their voices and did not approve of it, repeated with irritated obstinacy: “That’s over and done with. I’m not anybody’s sex object.” Without smiling, the parents merely nodded, not wanting to incite their daughter any further. Jan, however, could not resist saying:“ My dear girl, if you only knew how easy it is not to be a sex object.” He uttered these words softly, but with such sincere sorrow that they resounded in the room for a long while. They were words difficult to pass over in silence, but it was not possible to respond to them either. They did not deserve approval, not being progressive, but neither did they deserve argument, because they were not obviously against progress. There were the worst words possible, because they were situated outside the debate conducted by the spirit of the time. They were words beyond good and evil, perfectly incongruous words. Milan Kundera

Even the sober desire for progress is sustained by faith–faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature and in the omnipotence of science. It is a defiant and blasphemous faith, not unlike that held by the men who set out to build a "city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven" and who believed that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Eric Hoffer

Too often in the post-9/11 world, when the time has come to translate the moral, and essentially progressive, roots of foreign policy idealism into plans for American action, liberals have said, 'Duck. Richard Just

The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values. Theodore J. Kaczynski

The more routine that systematised activities are, the more nearly they are of the monotonous character seen in the habits of social animals and the less necessary are master builders; the more novel actions are, the more necessary are master builders. Dislike of the leader and the promoter, though linked emotionally to progressivism, is linked logically to total conservatism. Conversely, an authoritarian approach, natural enough in the instigator of new activities, is unjustified in the mere overseer of routines. Bertrand De Jouvenel

Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change. Bell Hooks

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) . Victor Davis Hanson

I know that no matter how liberal or progressive I profess to be, no matter how successfully, how diligently I seek to be enlightened and nuanced in my understanding of the world and those around me, I know that there still is a tiny, virulent nugget, a germ of prejudice that exists deep within me – the product of those stereotypes and awful jokes of childhood and adolescence, and that it must always be powerfully held at bay by reason, understanding and love. Michael Winship

When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a “case” with deliberate suppression of his opponent’s point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends. George Orwell

Socialism is not a meritocracy. By definition it places increasingly confining restraints on those that succeed the most. A.E. Samaan

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect. George F. Will

To Tom, the march of technology was equivalent to the march of civilization. Stephen L. Carter

People, imperfect and corruptible are society's building blocks. Political theories evading this reality are a catastrophe in waiting. A.E. Samaan

You can either have individual liberty, or dependence on the government. One is designed to undo the other. A.E. Samaan

A "centrally planned economy" by definition discourages and despises participation by the masses. It's a bureaucratic oligarchy. A.E. Samaan

There is no law, there is only conjecture. The Progressive ethos changes the law's meaning according to fad and fashion. A.E. Samaan

These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em. Laura Ingalls Wilder

I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land. Franklin D. Roosevelt

A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy. Theodore Roosevelt

When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too. Bill Moyers

The appeal by twentieth-century pluralists to scientific method was also ideologically–and even messianically–driven. It ignored scientific data that interfered with environmentalist assumptions and misrepresented socialist faith as “scientific planning. Paul Edward Gottfried

Racists are everywhere, but historically speaking the real danger came from Progressives that desired the power of the state to engineer society upon a racial lines. A.E. Samaan

There were several key American scientists that favorably reported on Nazi eugenics after visiting Hitler's Germany in order to provide it cover. A.E. Samaan

Completing the circle is both philosophical and tactical - there is a growing sense of mastery that comes with practice, diligence, and experience. Eric Mann

Capitalists grow wealth. Socialists redistribute wealth.... but population grows, so the Socialist population control kicks in in the form of eugenics. A.E. Samaan

There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: "In the long run we are all dead." And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom. Henry Hazlitt

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy–not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. Eric Hobsbawm

You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself. A.E. Samaan

Nine out of ten eugenicists in the 20th Century were also Progressives or Socialists, as central to the eugenic creed is the desire to engineer and centrally plan human reproduction and heredity. These were not people that believed in individual liberty. They certainly didn't believe the individual had the right to chose their own mate freely. They were statists, They were totalitarians at heart. . A.E. Samaan

Defy the central planners. Upend their designs for your life. Be a staunch individualist. Stand on your rights. A.E. Samaan

Neither Fascist Italy nor Spain adopted eugenics as an ideology central to their form of government the way the National Socialist did. However, socialist and progressive nations such as Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway did adopt and implement eugenics. This is because eugenics is the safety valve of a centrally planned economy. Central planners like John Maynard Keynes fear a population that is not as meticulously planned as the economy. They fear the unproductive sectors out-breeding the productive sectors of the population. This is also why Keynes was a lobbyist for the British eugenics movement both before and after The Holocaust. A.E. Samaan

Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left. Sean Hannity