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Liberalism   /lˈɪbərəlˌɪzəm/  /lˈɪbrəlˌɪzəm/   Listen
Liberalism

noun
1.
A political orientation that favors social progress by reform and by changing laws rather than by revolution.
2.
An economic theory advocating free competition and a self-regulating market.



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"Liberalism" Quotes from Famous Books



... produced his famous History of Scotland in twelve books, De Maria Regina ejusque conspiratione, in which he attacked the reputation of the Queen, and De jure regni apud Scotos, a book remarkable for the liberalism of the ideas which were therein expressed. His royal pupil did not treat Buchanan's History with due respect; he caused it to be proclaimed at the Merkat Cross, and ordered every one to bring his copy "to be perused and purged of the offensive and extraordinary matters." ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... Bavarian embassy; thence, disguised as the chaplain to the embassy, he succeeded in escaping to Gaeta, a town within the Neapolitan territory. The flight of the pope was followed by a protest on his part against the liberalism of his people, who organised a regular government on liberal principles; their efforts were counteracted by the spies and agents of the pope, and the embassies of all the Roman Catholic powers: among the foreign representatives, none was more hostile to the incipient liberties ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... presented to them as being between aristocratic and democratic ideas, between a race of gentlemen and a mob of shopkeepers and snobs, they should have been inclined to sympathize with the South. There have been unmistakable symptoms of a reaction in England, since 1848 especially, against liberalism in politics and in favor of things as they are. We are not to wonder that Englishmen did not stop to examine too closely the escutcheon and pedigree of this self-patented nobility. With one or two not very striking exceptions, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... England when the monarchy was much stronger than it is now, and when the aristocracy could still be called a ruling class. But as the British Government grew more democratic, the patronage system, as a relic of feudalism, had to yield to the forces of liberalism and enlightenment until it completely disappeared. When it invaded our national Government, forty years after its constitutional beginning, we merely took what England was casting off as an abuse ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... parliaments has ardent admirers in our own day. "Annual Parliaments" formed one of the points of the People's Charter. Many who would not accept the Chartist idea of annual parliaments would still regard as one of the articles of the true creed of Liberalism the principle of the triennial parliament. But even if that creed were true in the politics of the present day, it would not have been true in the early days of King George. One of the great constitutional changes which the times were then making, and which Walpole welcomed and helped ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... unheard of among civilised nations, dishonour to the Protestant cause, Drake deserving to swing at his own yardarm; so indignant Liberalism shrieked, and has not ceased shrieking. Let it be remembered that for fifteen years the Spaniards had been burning English seamen whenever they could catch them, plotting to kill the Queen and reduce England itself into vassaldom to the Pope. The English ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... liberalizing forces which first made themselves felt in a really determined way during this important transition century. In this chapter we shall consider briefly five important phases of this new eighteenth-century liberalism, as follows: ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... organ of Leo XIII. Those free-thinkers, protestants, and Jews in France who take part in the Anglophobe movement, are thus naively furthering the aims of the Vatican and the Jesuits, whose endeavour has ever been to stir up Europe against England—England that shall never be forgiven for the liberalism of her institutions, for the independence of her thinkers, and for her politics, to which they attribute, not without reason, the ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot

... Czar. This change has been explained by the revelation of a military conspiracy against his person. At all events, Alexander appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle with the most reactionary proposals. Up to this time Metternich, the inveterate foe of liberalism, had found in the Czar his most formidable opponent. Now the Czar distributed among his fellow sovereigns a pamphlet written by one Stourdza, which described Germany as on the brink of revolution, and blamed the universities and public press. Metternich instantly ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... that Mr. John Short began to quake the moment he began to test it. Once upon a time Norminster had returned a Fairfax as a matter of course, but for a generation its tendencies had been more and more towards Liberalism, and at the last election it had returned its old Whig member at the head of the poll, and in lieu of its old Tory member a native lawyer, one Bradley, who professed Radicalism on the hustings, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... his brother Nicholas succeeded, not without opposition, which led to bloodshed and the execution of the five Dekabrists (conspirators of December). The schemes of these men were impracticable; so little did the common people understand the very rudiments of liberalism, that when the soldiers were ordered to shout for Konstitoutzia (the constitution, a word the foreign appearance of which shows how alien it was to the national spirit), one of them naively asked, if that was the name of the wife of the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... people which was being preached everywhere at that time. This, however, was hardly more than a frame of mind, which did not preclude my feeling myself in sympathy with what at that time was called broad thought (i.e., Liberalism). Although I was often indignant at the National Liberal and Scandinavian terrorism which obtained a hearing at both convivial and serious meetings in the Students' Union, my feelings in the matter of Denmark's foreign policy with regard to Sweden and Norway, as well as to Germany, were the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... "Nationalism" in the form least likely to alarm Englishmen, especially those who do not care or wish to look below the surface and whose sympathies are readily won by any catchword that appeals to sentimental Liberalism. Now if Swaraj, or Colonial self-government, represents the minimum that will satisfy Indian Nationalists, it is important to know exactly what in their view it really means. Fortunately on this point we have some data of indisputable ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... circle, as their ardent speculation and activity fermented along, were in all things clear for progress, liberalism; their politics, and view of the Universe, decisively of the Radical sort. As indeed that of England then was, more than ever; the crust of old hide-bound Toryism being now openly cracking towards some incurable disruption, which accordingly ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... convert to liberalism, said: 'I intend to make a form of government in which my people shall have all the liberty that is compatible with the preservation of the ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... of the Chinese, the priests of the separate temples alone confining themselves to the worship of a particular deity. In India, however, the special followers of the two systems do not exhibit an equal liberalism of sentiment; while the worship of Brahma is considered orthodox, the cult of Buddha is regarded as heretical. The Buddhistic temples of Java, coming midway between the oldest Buddhistic temples of India and the modern shrines ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... were most defective; for the peculiar doctrines and spirit of the gospel were evaporated." It cannot be doubted, that a class which included such men as Henry More, Cudworth, Tillotson, and Burnet, hardly deserves the wholesale reprobation hurled upon it by Bunyan. That some of them carried their LIBERALISM to a dangerous extreme, and that all of them allowed too great latitude of sentiment in theology, and, by their philosophical speculations, obscured the simple glory of the gospel, is indeed true; but some who bore this name were men ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... magazine was owned as well as conducted at this time by a Mr. Holland, who had come back from Bolivar's South American campaigns with the rank of captain, and had hoped to make it a popular mouthpiece for his ardent liberalism. But this hope, as well as his own health, quite failed; and he had sorrowfully to decline receiving any more of the sketches when they had to cease as voluntary offerings. I do not think that either he or ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... also a Liberal, gave notice to oppose the resolution affirming with a curious liberalism, that "it is undesirable to change the immemorial basis of the franchise, which is that men only shall be qualified to elect members to serve in this House." Thus after a silence of four years, years of apparent inertia, but really fraught with ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... had to make up his mind. It would be odd and contrary to well-established precedent for ministers to adopt a policy already outlined by Opposition; and in view of the facts that good Whig tradition, even if somewhat obscured in latter days, committed them to some kind of liberalism, that the City and the mercantile interest thought Mr. Grenville's measures disastrous to trade, and that they were much in need of Mr. Pitt's eloquence to carry them through, ministers at last, in January, 1766, declared ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... long wished-for opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... strike being made against rent. The consequences of such an event will be terrific; but let these consequences, I say, rest on Mr. Forster's head. I shall have no word of pity for him. His government is a disgrace to Liberalism, and I fear he has done much to prejudice our ideal in the eyes of ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... not? No one objects to M. de Peyronnet," said Petit-Claud. He had not altogether sloughed his skin of Liberalism. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... the light of this double way of viewing the right balance of the mind, the better understand the combination of earnestness with tolerance which inconsiderate persons are apt to find so awkward a stumbling-block in the scheme of philosophic liberalism. Many people in our time have so ill understood the doctrine of liberty, that in some of the most active circles in society they now count you a bigot if you hold any proposition to be decidedly and unmistakably more true than any other. They pronounce you intemperate if you show anger and stern ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... of romanticism is that of Victor Hugo, who calls it "liberalism in literature." This has the merit of covering all kinds of romantic movements. "Liberalism" here means toleration of departures from fixed standards, such as the classical couplet and didactic and satiric subjects. Romanticism is ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... Jansenist author, was a heavy blow at his party. Finally, the Jansenists were proscribed by the king, and the cloister at Port Royal leveled to the ground. The Jansenist influence made a part of the tendencies to liberalism that led to the Revolution at the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... communist. Not because atheists and communists are related to the catholic and legitimist, but because they are more alien to him than the protestant and the liberal, because they are outside his circle. As a politician, the King of Prussia finds his immediate antagonism in politics, in liberalism. ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... ephemeral activity of each particular individual, as factors in a universal process, whereof none sees the issue, but which, willing or unwilling, each man helps to further. We shall then acknowledge that a contest between Conservatism and Liberalism, between established order and the order that is destined to replace it, between custom and innovation, constitutes the essence of vitality in human affairs. The nations by turns are protagonists in the drama of progress; by turns are doomed to play the part of obstructive agents. Intermingled ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... distinguished family. His father was a high church dignitary, his mother the daughter of a well-to-do Leipzig merchant. The boy had grown up under austere religious influences and then drifted far in the direction of liberalism. After a university career devoted at first to the humanities and then to law, he had travelled extensively in foreign countries, and then returned to Leipzig, full of ambition but undecided as to his future course. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... shone with increasing brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two kingdoms. For this purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party, whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of "understanding" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... acted in this particular. His object, plainly, was to prevent any unworthy persons from bearing the sacred symbol of domestic virtues. We cannot excuse his limiting these virtues to the circle of his court. We must only remember that such was the feeling of the age in which he lived. Liberalism had not yet raised the war-cry of the working classes. But here was his mistake: it was a needless regulation. Except in a very few cases of hypocrisy joined to a powerful intellect, men, not by nature UMBRELLARIANS, have tried again and again to become so by art, and yet have failed—have expended ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Dresden among the natives. So great is the respect for usages and customs in Germany, that the Electors of Saxony, on going over to Catholicism, never thought even of requesting the indulgence of exercising their religion publicly, and the granting it has produced no evil consequence, liberalism and the most unreserved toleration in matters of religion being the order of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... half ago when the world was painfully struggling out of the tyranny of autocratic kingship, when English liberalism was in its cradle, when Thomas Jefferson was composing the immortal phrases of the Declaration of Independence and unknown patriots dreamed of freedom in France,—at such an epoch it was but natural that the principle of popular election should be idealized as the sovereign ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock

... and, with the watchwords of "peace, retrenchment, and reform," began to insist upon a broader parliamentary franchise and upon fresh legislation for the protection and general betterment of the masses. The new liberalism was paralleled, however, by a new conservatism, whose principal exponent was Disraeli. The new Conservatives likewise advocated franchise reform and legislation for the people, although they put more emphasis upon ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... and the disposal of drenched mackintosh and cap, finally found her. He was tall lean fine, with little in him, on the whole, to confirm the titular in the "Colonel Voyt" by which he was announced. But he had left the army, so that his reputation for gallantry mainly depended now on his fighting Liberalism in the House of Commons. Even these facts, however, his aspect scantily matched; partly, no doubt, because he looked, as was usually said, un-English. His black hair, cropped close, was lightly powdered with silver, and his dense glossy beard, that of an emir or a caliph, and grown ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... however, liberalism, or, rather, ill-disguised socialism, was enthroned, for the moment, in what was destined to be, for a little while longer, the chief seat of European Power. It is not difficult to imagine whence counsel proceeded, and the inexperienced Emperor came to believe ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... for a time of home politics, which was, of course, in a wretched state. There was a time when we might both have been won to a sane and reasoned liberalism, but the present so-called government was coming it a bit too thick for us. We said some sharp things about the little Welsh attorney who was beginning to be England's humiliation. Then it was ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the head of a Germanic house that under him seemed destined to develop an old idea that it should become ruler of the world. If anything marred his strength in that quarter, it was the fact that the junior branch of the Austrian family was at that time inclined to liberalism in politics,—an offence against the purposes and traditions of the whole family of which few members of it have ever been guilty, before ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... true, rather favourably disposed towards the circulation of the Gospel though by no means inclined to make any particular sacrifice for the accomplishment of such an end: these were such as professed liberalism, which is supposed to mean a disposition to adopt any reform both in civil and church matters, which may be deemed conducive to the weal of the country. Not a few amongst the Spanish clergy were supporters of this principle, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... consultation only to endorse her judgment very readily. Until everything was settled I went every day to my old rooms in Vincent Square and worked at a series of papers that were originally intended for the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, the papers that afterwards became my fourth book, "New Aspects of Liberalism." ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... Disraeli's measure of 1867. Fitzjames considered himself to be a Liberal, but the Liberals of those days were divided into various sections, not fully conscious of the differences which divided them. In one of his 'Cornhill' articles[98] Fitzjames had attempted to define what he meant by liberalism. It meant, he said, hostility to antiquated and narrow-minded institutions. It ought also to mean 'generous and high-minded sentiments upon political subjects guided by a highly instructed, large-minded and impartial intellect, briefly ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... contest two distinct political parties had developed—the Liberal party and the party of Absolutism. As Ferdinand VII. became the choice of the Liberals, and his brother Don Carlos of the party of Absolutism, we must infer either that it was a Liberalism of a very mild type, or that Ferdinand's views had been modified since the "Holy Alliance" took his kingdom into its own keeping. But his brother Carlos was the adored of the Absolutists, and a plot was made to compel Ferdinand to abdicate in his favor. This was the first of ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... a Voltairian—he renounced horsemanship, and Liberalism. Although he was a simple deputy, he had a twinge of democracy now and then; but after he was invested with the peerage, he felt sure from that moment that the human species had no more ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... FERDINAND, born 23d May, 1730: a brilliant enough little soldier under his Brother, full of spirit and talent, but liable to weak health;—was Father of the "Prince Louis Ferdinand," a tragic Failure of something considerable, who went off in Liberalism, wit, in high sentiment, expenditure and debauchery, greatly to the admiration of some persons; and at length rushed desperate upon the Frenoh, and found his quietus (10th October, 1806), four days before ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... that, as a critic of books, he had in his lifetime the reputation, the vogue, which he deserved. But his criticism in other fields has hardly been appreciated at its proper value. Certainly his politics were rather fantastic. They were influenced by his father's fiery but limited Liberalism, by the abstract speculation which flourishes perennially at Oxford, and by the cultivated Whiggery which he imbibed as Lord Lansdowne's Private Secretary; and the result often seemed wayward and whimsical. Of this he was himself in some degree aware. At any rate he knew ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... of the Puritans,—an historical disquisition on the principles of self-government evolved in New England, broad in its views, eloquent in its language. Its spirit is thoroughly American, and its estimate of the Puritan character is not narrowed by the nearsighted liberalism which sees the past in the pitiless light of the present,—which looks around at high noon and finds fault with early dawn for its long and dark shadows. Here is a sentence ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... desire is to give to Spain exactly that which she does not possess, in spite of the lying clamour of some deluded people—that liberty which she only knows by name; liberty, which is the daughter of the gospel, not liberalism, which is the son of disbelief (de la protesta); liberty, in fine, which is the supremacy of the laws when the laws are just—that is to say, conformable to the designs ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... their old creeds, have run past the standard of truth and right. All this wildness in the standardless field of thought, where Hobbes and other infidels reveled, without any guide save the civil law, has been denominated "Broad-gauge religion," and "Liberalism." ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880

... pictures as crowding his table in the Temple. Let him join debating societies, and learn how to speak in public; let him eat, drink, and be merry in London; let him, in fact, do anything except run the head which flattery has turned against the sturdy stone of Billsbury Liberalism. We give him this advice in no unfriendly spirit. Let him be wise ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... Minister of the Interior, Gran, who is largely responsible for his liberalism, and whose whole policy it has been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; and the king himself, convinced of the futility of all his efforts to realize his idea of a democratic monarchy, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen



Words linked to "Liberalism" :   political orientation, liberalistic, economic theory, ideology, political theory



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