Quotes & Sayings About Progressivism

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

It is fair to say, Bernie Sanders, that in your definition, as you being the self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism, I don't know anyone else who fits that definition, but I know a lot of really hard fighting progressives in the Democratic party who have stood up time, and time again against special interests, against the powerful on behalf of those who are left behind and left out. — Hillary Clinton

Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes - the people who have just enough to fear losing it - are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic royalists," and so on are the stock-in-trade of fascist demagogues. — Jonah Goldberg

Progressivism is the belief that we have too much freedom with which to make too many stupid choices. — David Harsanyi

Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community. — Jane Smiley

PROGRESSIVISM = EUGENICS: Centrally Planned economies tempt population control. — A.E. Samaan

Fear, as well as the hopeful (if not pointless) solutions offered to combat it, is ultimately what make progressivism so successful. It's what makes otherwise intelligent, rational, and good human beings succumb so easily to obviously absurd visions of the future painted by politicians. It's why our brothers and sisters and our children - and sometimes even you and I - are continually tempted by the progressive siren song. — Glenn Beck

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much. — Eric Hoffer

[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century. — Thomas Frank

Socialists and Progressives confuse compassion and compulsion. — A.E. Samaan

It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption, it is progressivism, and it is in both parties. It is in the Republicans and the Democrats. — Glenn Beck

'Putting People First' was progressivism revived and at its best. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

There are few problems in the world that economic prosperity
cannot help solve. Yet the engines of that prosperity are under fierce
attack. The forces that seek power over others have gained the upper
hand against those that seek freedom. By harming wealth creation,
they cause even more strain on society. Historically, this is nothing
new. State domination over its subjects has roots that connect statism,
totalitarianism, communism, and socialism to more modern-day variants
of liberalism and progressivism. It is a constant fight and we must
win. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

The problem of life was as simple as it was classic. Politics offered no difficulties, for there the moral law was a sure guide. Social perfection was also sure, because human nature worked for Good, and three instruments were all she asked - Suffrage, Common Schools, and Press. On these points doubt was forbidden. Education was divine, and man needed only a correct knowledge of facts to reach perfection:
Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals nor forts. — Henry Adams

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

The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world. — George Orwell

All this talk of criminals brings me to the main subject of this book, which is Hillary Clinton. So far it may seem like this has been all about progressivism and the Democratic Party, but Hillary is there from the beginning, she is present in every chapter, her spirit haunts the history of her party because all the evil schemes of her party have, in a sense, become consolidated into her own career and life. Hillary is, in this respect, the dark id of the Democratic Party. — Dinesh D'Souza

The Truth about America's Silicon Valley-
Angels in the Silicon

Riveting and insightful regarding progressivism and the social upheavals living in the Silicon Valley.-

John Yoo, UC Berkeley Constitutional Lawyer, novelist, and public servant — Richard Theodor Kusiolek

The problem is that most of us hated school. His fallacy was much the same as progressivism's: the assumption that if he could just explain the facts clearly, build a convincing enough argument, eventually everyone would come around to his conclusion. But people aren't interested in lectures; they want to hear stories. Which is why the right holds the demagogic advantage over the left in America; they tell a simpler, more satisfying story. — Tim Kreider

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

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

The notion that religion can actually be something ... attached to progressivism seems so bizarre. But all you have to say is that Abolition wouldn't have happened without it. The way in which African Americans managed to achieve a degree of self-determination was through the church. — Simon Schama

Progressivism is a luxury of the one percent. — R. R. Reno

Most of us agree that the United Nations is the vanguard of a foreign invasion and must be driven from our shores. Liberalism Progressivism all forms of left wing collectivism , are equally alien to the Founders ' America and must be extirpated, root and branch, laughter and derision being the most effective weapons. Look at the way they have reduced Hillary Clinton to an insignificant greasy spot on the pages of history, turned Albert Gore into an object of merriment, and are accomplishing the same for Barry and Micky Obama. — L. Neil Smith

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

You like to think that people, in general, and I mean on the scale of generations, are learning from their mistakes, getting better. But with what all I seen, I don't know if I could believe that. — Taylor Brown

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

Progressives did not like the antiquated thinking that saw the Constitution as a barrier to government expansion. The "living Constitution" was born. That benign-sounding phrase (coined later) was conjured up to justify changing the Constitution, without formal amendment, from a limit on power to a blank check. What was impermissible to the federal government by an earlier interpretation became permissible once the Constitution was construed as a evolving document. But by that philosophy, the Constitution is no limit on government power at all. A constitutional government that defines its own powers is a contradiction in terms. — Sheldon Richman

Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration. These are different love languages. These languages turn on your view of change itself: When you think of America, do you see a country struggling to be maintained or one striving to be made better? — Charles M. Blow

It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid. — Edward Norton

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

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

Louisville is a place with no labels. It's not the South, it's not Chicago, and you don't think of it as you think of New York or LA. It has some Southern romanticism to it, but also a Northern progressivism, this weird urban island in the middle of the state of Kentucky that has always provided a fertile, often dark, bed. For us, Louisville and the surrounding areas are the center of massive creativity and massive weirdness. The place has its flaws: You move away, but you're always going to come back. — Jim James

Why center your focus on making "Liberia" a Christian (nation) State? The focus should be, on, making "Liberia" a progressive state. Not a Christian one. Progressivism in "Liberia" should be the path vital to improving the human condition. — Henry Johnson Jr

What came in the end was only a small war and a quick victory; when the farmers and the gentlemen finally did coalesce in politics, they produced only the genial reforms of Progressivism; and the man on the white horse turned out to be just a graduate of the Harvard boxing squad, equipped with an immense bag of platitudes, and quite willing to play the democratic game. — Richard Hofstadter

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

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

This is not an accident. Progressivism is a mindset that favors the use of aggressive government force to solve social problems. Prison is one of its main tools. Prison is the threat behind every progressive edict. If you don't directly merit prison by violating a criminal statute, you can earn prison by interfering with a government agent enforcing progressive policies or by ignoring a court order to obey the law. A large number of prisoners are incarcerated either because they violated a progressive drug law or because their illegal drug habit drew them into a criminal lifestyle. — James Ostrowski

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

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

I want to see a more progressive Democratic ticket. I'm not happy with the Democratic Leadership Council's dominance of the party. And although I'm unlikely to be the person, I want Wisconsin's progressivism to influence the ticket. And we'll do better as a party if we do. We'll have more energy. We'll have a broader tent. — Russ Feingold

Edward Bellamy's eugenic utopian novel, "Looking Backward" was the inspiration for American Progressivism. — A.E. Samaan

To reject any vast group of one's cultural ancestors in the cause of some current theory is not just arrogance; it's posthumous mass murder. It's the same kind of thinking that makes genocide possible. The masses (albeit the dead masses) and the pathetic little lives they lived are irrelevant compared to this greater purpose we have at hand. Write them out of the record. They never existed.
...
One could not judge things by the brief span of one's own lifetime. That was at the core of modern arrogance: only my lifetime counts. My lifetime is 'forever.' Time before it and time after it do not exist. Everything of importance must come to pass in my lifetime. This is what drives the frenzy for change. — Tony Hendra

American Progressivism - the moralistic social crusade from which modern liberals proudly claim descent - is in some respects the major source of the fascist ideas applied in Europe by Mussolini and Hitler. — Jonah Goldberg

With the sole exception of President Bill Clinton, whose 'bridge to the 21st century' evoked the vision and optimism of other great Democratic presidents of the 20th century, such as FDR and John F. Kennedy, pessimism about America's economic future has been the hallmark of modern progressivism. — Bernard L. Schwartz

Progress must not become progressivism, where success is measured only by achieving pragmatic results. — Mal Fletcher

Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy. — Simon Cottee

Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible. — Jill Lepore

The fact is that the Democratic Party in modern times has always had a conservative wing, one frequently as strong or stronger than its liberal wing, and as such, when progressives speak of the party as a vehicle that naturally belongs to them, as if by right - until conservatives stole it from them - they weaken progressivism. — Rick Perlstein

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

Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism. — Jonah Goldberg

During the last ten years or so, I've seen quite a lot of Gordon, selling off his land for him. You know Gordon. He goes for anything trendy, especially young people's fads. Goes all out for a while, until something else takes his attention. Disco dancing, anti-draft, cocaine, anti-nuke - he has his little fling at whatever is 'in.' Most of 'em seem kind of nasty to me, but then I'm a bourgeois flag-waver."

"He calls me a fascist," Helena said.

"Oh, sure. He'd call me one too, except that I'm an Oppressed Minority. I bother him because I don't behave the way his stereotype says I should. — Bob Leman

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

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

Progressives start small. They introduce 'commonsense' regulations and restrictions that will supposedly save lives. Then, each time the public's attention is captured, they push further. — Glenn Beck

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

Did you know about the Democratic president who is the founder of modern progressivism - and also responsible for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan? What about the most popular Democratic president of the twentieth century - who blocked anti-lynching laws and for more than a decade cut deals with racists to exclude blacks from government programs? Then there is the president who is the hero of the Civil Rights laws - the same fellow that called blacks "niggers" and said he wanted to keep them confined to the Democratic plantation. — Dinesh D'Souza

In many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism
the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism
is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism. — Jonah Goldberg

Let's trace the birth of an idea. It's born as rampant radicalism, then it becomes progressivism, then liberalism, then it becomes moderated conservative, outmoded, and gone. — Powell Clayton

The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you. — A.E. Samaan

Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by. — A.E. Samaan

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

Many American boys that fought in WWII had been sterilized under eugenic laws passed by the the United States Supreme Court under the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell. Over 80,000 Americans would be forcibly sterilized under that legal precedent. Coincidentally, Buck v Bell is also the legal precedent cited in Roe v. Wade, the famous abortion rights case. — A.E. Samaan

Progressives should argue progressivism. We need to get out of issue silos that isolate arguments and keep us from the values and principles that define an overall progressive vision. 2. — George Lakoff

Progressivism is an active channel for social equity, social liberalism, and political rights for all people. — Henry Johnson Jr

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

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

Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter. — Jonah Goldberg

It was left to the Progressive movement in America (as to the Fabians in Britain) to promote eugenics, Prohibition, dietary fads, the compulsory sterilisation of those they deemed 'unfit', and preferential treatment in immigration law of 'Nordic' (and preferably Protestant) immigrants. — Markham Shaw Pyle

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

Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution. — Glenn Beck

I have never in my life encountered a religion as oppressive, cold, and stiff as Progressivism. I've never known a faith more eager to burn heretics at the stake. Even a fundamentalist Iranian Muslim would flinch if he came face to face with a western liberal's rigid dogmatism. I imagine that even a Saudi Arabian Islamic cleric would take one look at how American left wingers react when anyone deviates ever so slightly from their established orthodoxy, and say to himself, 'man, these people REALLY need to chill. — Matt Walsh

Progressivism is a spectrum; it's not an ideology following one leader saying one thing. It's many people who have very wildly diverging opinions about many things. But, as progressives, if we could commit to a general frame of reference that we are about improving the quality of life for a lot more people, we're about helping working and middle-class people, and we're about taking care of poor people, we could really make some inroads in political power in this country. But, if we choose to be purists, if we choose to be arguing for a consensus we will never reach, for agreement on every point, it's never going to happen. — Urvashi Vaid

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

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

Progressives have spent the better part of a hundred years pushing their agenda - and they've hijacked everything from our kindergartens to our colleges to do it. The more 'educated' we get, the dumber we become. And that has always been the goal. There's a reason that slave masters wanted to keep their slaves illiterate: they understood that true education makes makes people long for freedom and liberty. Today's slave masters are the professors and unions and bureaucrats in Washington who run our education system. — Glenn Beck

American newspapers frequently offered praise for eugenics just prior to WWII and The Holocaust .... that is, until Hitler revealed what eugenics really looked like. They avoided the subject for decades thereafter. — A.E. Samaan

Global economic growth will soon clash with physical barriers. It is physically impossible to fulfil the ideal of progressivism: the spread of techno-scientific consumer culture to ten billion people. When this dream has faded, another will emerge. — Guillaume Faye

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

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

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

Far-seeing patriots should turn scornfully from men who seek power on a platform which with exquisite nicety combines silly inability to understand the national needs and dishonest insintcerity in promising conflicting and impossible remedies. — Theodore Roosevelt