liberals

"It's not about the votes. The elections were rigged. But if they weren't, we'd get even less votes. Because fair elections is not just a live feed for Grigory Alekseyevich. It's also the admission of all those who wish to participate. It means that in that live feed, there would have been the more popular Kasparov and Ryzhkov. It means that Kasyanov would've participated in the election with his financial resources. This means that the issues of uniting Democrats would've been resolved not in the Presidential Administration, but in an open dialogue. I am not sure that the party leadership is ready for such a dialogue. I claim that the main reason for the current electoral disaster is that the Yabloko has turned into a dried-up closed sect. We demand everyone to be Democrats, but we don't want to be Democrats ourselves. We demand responsibility and resignations from the authorities. But we do not see that the government has already been replaced three times, while in Yabloko everything is like in '96. And the worse the results, the stronger the leadership's position. The closer we must gather around him. Since this may be my last speech as a member of Yabloko, I appeal to stop self-deception about our high results, about the possible theft of votes. Stop lying about this topic. Draw conclusions and make decisions. And the first decision that I demand as a member of the Federal Council of the party, elected by the Moscow organization: the immediate resignation of the chairman of the party and all his deputies. I make this demand on my own behalf and on behalf of all my comrades. I also call on the party congress to resign and re-elect at least 70% of the Bureau, which covers incompetent leadership with its silent obedience."

"The members of Yabloko only want Russia to become a country in which our children would want to live, from which smart people, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and financiers would not leave abroad. If we'll come to power, we'll achieve that. And if it is necessary for Yabloko to become the conscience of Russia, it will be."

"I see, how he (Putin) has waged the war, how in the Duma he brokered an alliance with the communists and the nationalists, how he uses methods of force, i hear his absurd rhetoric about a great nation, behind which hides a humiliation of Russia and a desolation of the population. That is enough for me."

"Russia in it's scope is such a big and serious country that it will always be a part of world politics."

"...However, working fairly succesfully in «Yabloko», I always had a problem. Better than anybody else, it was accurately and briefly outlined by one of the representatives of the mysterious team of the Chairman of the party, which he always attracts to the elections and which then also mysteriously disappears. «Alexey, — he said, — your problem is that you don't love Yavlinsky sincerely». Yeah. You bet. I respect him for some of his previous achievements, but I don't like him at all."

"There is only one party in Russia that defends the system of European values - Yabloko. Others defend conservative or Soviet ideals. It makes no sense to distinguish between those who support private property and those who reject it. Attention should be paid to the position regarding civil liberties and human rights. Which parties are the basis for modern fascism? Those that protect private property but ignore human rights. Who are the Liberals, Democrats and Social Democrats? Those who protect not only private property, but also rights and freedoms."

"As men, you stand at the center of the universe. You spout pearls of wisdom that shape the future of the world. So when your female friend comes to you, you might wonder: ‘Is she hoping to share her sadness with me? No, she must be hoping to learn something from me!’"

"If a man wants to marry me now, it should be more convenient when he just wants to beat me."

"It wasn't until I saw the comments that I realised some people reacted aggressively towards my performance. It kind of scared me. I felt like I was dragged into a war I didn't start. I'm only trying to be funny. In fact, in the same performance, I also ridiculed women for being emotional, but I didn't receive any hateful comments or threats from female netizens. Women have most likely become used to their stereotypical weakness being made fun of, while men have heard so few jokes like this before."

"To be honest, I thought at first that it was an advantage for women to stand alone, because the most important thing for actors is to have their own labels on stage, and actresses carry their own labels. My image on stage has always been that of a girl who is single, who wants to fall in love and who is not particular about being particular."

"Intel is so picky about laptops, they’re even more selective than my taste in men."

"Regarding the change in identity, I actually took the initiative to accept and work hard to change in this direction, because I feel that growing up on the stage is not as rewarding as recording a show, and I am still eager to go."

"Men are adorable, but mysterious...How can he be so average, yet so full of confidence?"

"A joke can only get laughs for one reason because it resonates."

"My mother never urged me to have a blind date again. She felt that if a man wanted to marry me, it might just be more convenient for him to beat me. In this world, all girls will get sympathy when they encounter domestic violence."

"The supermodels all have skeletal bodies . . . the very existence of their bodies expresses an attitude: the disdain for men. The more men like a certain part of their bodies, the less they want to grow that part. Fashion is such an attitude."

"Unlike women, who always think of themselves as unimportant, men always think of themselves as the center of the universe. Every single sentence from men carries utmost importance, and points out the right direction in which the world should advance."

"To live on and to strive regardless of the burdens of suffering, to kindle that precious flame even in the stygian depths of night and prepare to greet the dawn."

"As long as I draw breath I will strive to be heard. This is incumbent upon me, just as it is my fate."

"Totalitarianism will come to no good end and that true freedom will finally visit our land. The Will of Heaven and the Hearts of Humanity, like the luminosity of Sun and Moon light the way!"

"News from the White House that $500,000 was the cap the government wants to put on executive salaries at the banks receiving bailout cash had some on Wall Street and along the plush corridors of Manhattan's swank Upper East Side hollering "Unfair!"..."You Try to Live on 500K in This Town" was the tongue-in-cheek headline in last Sunday's New York Times... But they work hard for their multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses, perks and solid gold benefits, complained some of the financiers. Besides, executive headhunters say, the money giants just can't get good help for anything less."

": This administration is all about enriching -style businesses at the expense of low-income workers and consumers. This is the same administration, after all, that has gone out of its way to turn the into a vehicle to protect payday lenders and that has waged war on the student loan forgiveness program. The NLRB’s extraordinary anti-union efforts are more of the same. They are about making workers more vulnerable and more insecure, as are the administration’s relentless efforts to roll back the and expansion—because the more insecure that people at the bottom of the economy are, the easier they are to bully and exploit."

"In the wake of teachers’ strikes in a number of states, recent polling shows public support for unions at 64 percent—the highest, except for a few blips, in half a century. These are important developments. Labor is finally stirring. And Americans are on to the fact that Trump’s faux populism is actually all about rigging the game in favor of the wealthy."

"One of these innovators—perhaps the most stimulating to his contemporaries, though not the most successful in giving permanent form to his thoughts—was Thomas Hill Green. A sound instinct led him to a systematic, minute study of Hume; in his efforts to gain a sure footing he examined the works of the master of destructive criticism. Green did not construct a system, for one can scarcely term such his "Simplified Kantism"; at the end of his life he was groping in search of larger truths. But if an active, hopeful spirit in philosophy is abroad, he as much as anyone helped to bring it about. Far outside the realm of pure philosophy his influence extended; and many of those who have an idea of a life of "Christian citizenship"—those who hold fast to the doctrine that "only citizenship makes the moral man"—know not that they derive from him their creed."

"Central to Green's thought, and most important to later new Liberal theorists, was Green's redefinition of freedom. The expansion of the idea of freedom to include economic as well as political rights concerned the later Mill. But it was in the works of Green that a new theoretical definition of freedom was first developed. Green was aware of the economic and social conditions which were leading men to question the traditional Liberal concept of freedom, but his own definition must be understood not only in terms of his reaction to the suffering of the poor and the working class, but more important, in terms of his moral concerns. Green's original interests were basically moral and religious, and his idealist metaphysics was meant to replace Christianity with a kind of undogmatic religion where men found God through service in this world."

"At Oxford a leading mind between 1860 and 1880 was T. H. Green, a man remarkable both in mental power and influence. He first gave a shake to Mill's supremacy as logician and metaphysician. But, notwithstanding Mill's conviction that false philosophy is the support of bad institutions, his critic's intuitionist philosophy did not prevent Green from being an ardent reformer, with Cobden and Bright for idols. In 1858 he ventured on a motion at the Union in approval of Bright. "It was frantically opposed," he said, "and after two days' discussion I found myself in a minority of two. I am almost ashamed to belong to a university which is in such a state of darkness.""

"The inspiration for Toynbee, as for a whole generation of social reformers, came from the Oxford philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836–82). Green's reappraisal of the central tenets of Liberalism makes him the most important figure of this period... [I]n his attempt to revise traditional Liberal theories to meet new situations, Green broke with traditional English empiricism and adopted an idealist metaphysics. His adoption of idealism allowed Green to redefine the Liberal ideas of freedom and society in order to permit state action."

"T. H. Green taught philosophy from his base at Balliol College in Oxford and his work resulted in lifting much of the honey from the Christian hive and securing it in a public ideology to which Christians and non-Christians could subscribe. He recognised that a literal belief in the New Testament miracles had become the tripwire into disbelief for all too many people. Green successfully divorced Christian morality from dogma and English Idealism was born. For a century our country's hymn sheet was based on Green's work. Most people were probably unaware of their debt to this obscure Oxford don but that did not stop them gustily singing the same songs as everyone else."

"The young were taught in sixth form and university all the fallacies in John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty and were encouraged to believe that T. H. Green's definition of positive freedom was superior. Gladstonian liberals declared that socialist plans to nationalize industry and control production infringed personal freedom. But Green argued that so far from diminishing freedom such measures could increase it. A few people's freedom would be curtailed but vastly more people would now be made free to do things that hitherto they had been unable to do. The sum of freedom would increase. "Freedom for an Oxford don," it was said, "is a very different freedom for an Egyptian peasant.""

"[I]t is quite certain that only through the equal presence to successive feeling of a subject other than they, which holds them together, and thus held together regards them as its object, are there related things or relations at all. It is not that first there are relations then they are conceived. Every relation is constituted by an act of conception. This is not to be understood as meaning that there is 'nothing but the soul and its feelings,' or that realities are feelings, even feelings as determined by thought. It is through feeling as determined by thought that for us there comes to be reality, but the reality is not to be identified with the process by which we, as thinking animals, arrive at it. Even simple facts of feeling (e.g. the fact that a certain sweet smell accompanies the sight of a rose) are not feelings as felt: more clearly, the conditions of such facts are not feelings, even as determined by thought. A 'feeling determined by thought' would probably mean a feeling which but for thought I should not have, e.g. emotion at the spectacle of a tragedy. Objective facts are not of this sort, not feelings determined by thought, though but for the determination of feeling by thought they would not exist for our consciousness."

"Green, profoundly dissatisfied with these meagre and arid dietaries, turned away from them, and gradually found that for which he was in quest—the basis of a spiritual philosophy—in the speculations of Kant and his successors, and in particular of Hegel. He was commonly called a Hegelian, but while he was steeped and even saturated in the dialectic of that illustrious teacher, he never lost his intellectual self-mastery, and his presentation of the Hegelian doctrine was always coloured, both in substance and in expression, by his own robust and independent personality. He had, indeed, another side to his life and activities. He was a man of affairs, a member for some time of the Oxford City Council, an ardent Liberal politician, and an energetic worker in causes, such for instance as that of temperance, in which he thought he could discern the germs of social progress. He was a layman, and could have passed none of the common tests of orthodoxy, but he had a profoundly religious mind. His lectures on St. Paul's Epistles were the best I ever heard."

"Green's brilliance was not confined to what many people saw as a secular faith. He also had the clearest idea of how this faith was to be spread. Balliol became a powerhouse for teaching Britain's elite a set of beliefs that would shape their own lives while becoming the prism through which public policy was refracted. The last prime minister to have known that he was an Idealist was Clement Attlee and Attlee's adherence to the hymn sheet was probably typical of most."

"Green gave a superficial impression of reserve and even austerity, but no teacher in Oxford gathered around him, as time went on, such a band of wholehearted and enthusiastic disciples. His lectures were not easy to follow: his manner was apt to be jerky; and his style abounded in what Burke calls “nodosities.” It was a familiar gibe of those who looked on from outside the fold, that by the end of the hour he had become so contorted that he had to be untied by friendly hands. It must be admitted that, while he made a deep and indelible impression, not only upon the best intellects of the place, but upon the whole course of philosophic thought in the University then and thereafter, the less well-grounded of his neophytes began to talk a jargon or “patter” which lent itself to the ridicule of the unregenerate. Jowett looked on with a certain mild and mellow scepticism at these new departures, having himself (as I have said elsewhere) in his earlier days “déjà passé par là.” Between 1870 and 1880 Green was undoubtedly the greatest personal force in the real life of Oxford."

"He was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of non-intervention."

"He thought an economic policy could be devised that would at once hasten victory and deal with the after-war problems, one that would develop our resources, increase our production of wealth, and provide employment for the people at fair and reasonable wages and conditions of labour. It must also ensure national safety and future commercial and industrial welfare. ... We should endeavour to create a self-contained Empire. (Cheers.) We should no longer be dependent for our raw materials upon an actual or potential enemy. (Renewed cheers.)"

"[A]mongst the chief causes of this war [is] the desire of Germany to wrest from Britain her industrial and commercial supremacy. ... [I]f I have interpreted the temper of the people of the Empire aright, they have determined that the end of this war will see, not only the downfall of Prussian military power, but of that insidious and intolerable influence which had in very many cases reached a point when Germany actually dominated the trade, not only of this Empire, but of that of our Allies."

"We are loyal to the Empire first and foremost because we are of the British race."

"[W]e believe in the British Empire because it stands for liberty; because it has given us all that we have; because it has protected us all our lives; because it now protects us; because we know that without its protection in this war we should long ago have become a German colony; that our lot would have been that of Belgium. We are for the Empire because the Empire is at once our sword and our shield. It is the greatest guarantee of the world's peace, of true civilisation. We are for the Empire because we are true to Australia, to liberty, to ourselves."

"I emphasize that...nothing short of a decisive victory will avail. Germany's military power must be utterly crushed. (Cheers.) In no other way can the peace of the world be assured. Peace under any other conditions would be only a period of feverish preparation for another and even more fearful struggle."

"I then went to meet Mr. Hughes, the Australian Prime Minister. I found him a great Imperialist, and first and last out to win the war. He was there to do all in his power to help the Australian Imperial Force, and insisted that I should retain the command of it. He was a man of strong character and great determination, and a fine, forceful speaker."

"Hughes struck me as an able man. He is very deaf but remarkably acute and direct in what he says; the ablest Colonial politician I have met."

"The right of the state to determine the conditions under which persons shall enter its territories cannot be impaired without reducing it to a vassal state. ... If it [the Permanent Court of International Justice] should decide that it is better for the world that Australia should open her doors to the East, it would be the end of Australia and the future of the civilized world would be profoundly changed. ... We have a certainty of security now as far as it can be assured. We are asked to exchange this for the uncertainty, at the best, of the action of an unknown Court. We must reject the Protocol."

"We can only hope to cheek the drift towards the great cities—manifested throughout the world—which here has gone much farther than is safe, if we make life on the land profitable and attractive. The wonderful discoveries of applied science, and their application to industry; the marvellous improvements that have been made in transport and communications by railways, motor transport, telegraph and telephone and wireless, have placed at our disposal means by which life, in the country can be made as attractive, as comfortable, and as profitable as in the great cities."

"At the Peace Conference of 1919, Baron Makino insisted on the insertion of an amendment to the Covenant [of the League of Nations] recognizing the principle of racial equality. Baron Makino assured me that the amendment was not for use, but was merely an assertion of principle. When I offered to accept it provided that words were incorporated making it clear that it was not to be used for the purpose of immigration or of impairing our rights of self-government in any way, Baron Makino was unable to agree."

"Australia regards the unveiling of the National Memorial not only as a tribute to her 60,000 dead but as a lasting symbol of that brotherhood of arms and blood which binds the Empire together. They and their brothers in Britain and the other Dominions fought and died to preserve the Empire and safeguard civilisation. They died that we might live as free men. They left us the legacy of liberty and a united Empire. It is for us to treasure their memory not only in the memorial now to be unveiled but in the realisation of those ideals and the maintenance of the Empire for which they gave their lives."

"On the welfare of Australia depends the welfare of every citizen, producer and consumer, employer and employee. Let our watchword be Australia, and as our splendid boys have fought for it and saved it let us all live and work for it. In this spirit the war was won; in this spirit and in this spirit only can we win the peace."

"It is our duty to help the Empire in this struggle. It is indeed imperative to do so, for only by helping the Empire can we save Australia. As I have said, there are many ways in which we can help the Empire—with men, with money, with our products. As to men, now that the people have decided against compulsion, the call of duty, of patriotism, of Australia, of Empire, must reach the ears of all our young men. Let them go forth and strike a blow for the land that has bred them. Let them draw the sword in defence of those liberties with which this country has so richly endowed them."

"The most vital point of our policy is the one to which I have just alluded - a White Australia. ... I do not believe that there are any Australians who will not readily declare that, on this principle, there can be no concession whatever. I had the honour to place the position of the Commonwealth before the great Peace Conference, and whether the people of Australia agree with me or not politically, I think the overwhelming bulk of them will endorse my attitude on this subject. We must always be ready to defend this principle. We cannot hope to maintain it merely by pious or blatant declarations of our intentions. Behind all this there must be some force - the utmost resources of the nation. So much is obvious."

"The burning blasts of war have shrivelled, blackened, and destroyed the world we once knew. Old landmarks have disappeared. The nations of the earth panting from the struggle, impoverished by the unprecedented destruction of wealth, are confronted with a new set of financial, national, and industrial circumstances. Humanity has indulged in a terrible orgy of destruction; it must pay the price. We must enter on a long period of reconstruction—wherein capital will be scarce, interest high, wages and materials costly."

"We have not the option of keeping out all would-be immigrants—some by our laws, others by passive resistance. One choice, and one only, is given to us. We can bring in without delay our kinsmen from Britain, and, if the numbers of these be insufficient, such other white races as will assimilate with our own. Or we can live for a short season in a paradise of fools, and then see the doors of our house forced, and streams of people from lands where there is hardly standing room, pour in and submerge us. That is the position which confronts us."