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Americas 10 worst presidents: [ as of 2018
US News & World Report ]

1. James Buchanan
2. Warren Harding
3. Andrew Johnson
4. Franklin Pierce
5. Millard Fillmore
6. John Tyler

7. Ulysses S Grant
8. William Henry Harrison
9. Herbert Hoover
10. George W. Bush
    and Richard Nixon
    tied for 10th Place

- A -  Liberalism
(at the individual level)
is about :
liberating Your Mind :

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"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark.

• The real tragedy of life is
  when men are afraid of the light."

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• "There is only one good, knowledge,
  and one evil, ignorance." - Socrates

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"Of all the varieties of virtues,

• liberalism is the most beloved."

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• "Not to know is bad;  not to wish to know is worse." - Nigerian Proverb -

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• "Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue." - Sherlock Holmes, (Arthur Conan Doyle)

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• "Once expanded to the dimensions of a larger idea, [the mind] never returns to its original size."  - Oliver Wendell Holmes -

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• "Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards." - Soeren Kierkegaard -

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• "When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it,
  but for the sake of defending those that do" - William Blake -

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• "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." &
  
• "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell -

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• "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free ." - Jesus of Nazareth -

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• "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you angry ." - Aldous Huxley -

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• "All truth passes through three stages:    first, it is ridiculed ;
     second, it is violently opposed and
     third, it is accepted as self-evident ". - German philosopher,  Arthur Schopenhauer - (1788-1860)

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• "A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel."
  - Robert Frost -

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• “Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. ” &
• "Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
  - Mark Twain -

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• "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
    - William Butler Yeats' poem,  The Second Coming -

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• Bertrand Russell

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• "A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward
  to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future." (for everyone) - Leonard Bernstein -

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• - Benjamin Franklin -
  "They that can give up essential liberty for a little safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -

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• John Wesley ~  
  It was John Wesley who founded Methodism, the faith embraced by George McGovern, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Hubert Humphrey, Walter F. Mondale, Jackie Robinson, Will Rogers, David Frost, Ulysses S. Grant, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Stephen King, George Lucas, Beyoncé Knowles, Donna Reed, & many other famous Americans.
          In 1844, even before the secession of the southern states, the "Southern Methodist Church" broke away from their mother church, and despite being re-united into the "United Methodist Church" since 1939, the difference in their faith is still manifest in members such as Gov. George Wallace, Sen. Jeff Sessions, and Rush Limbaugh, and many other famous conservatives.
• "You cannot reason people out of positions they were not reasoned into." - Jonathan Swift -

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• "Liberalism, above all, means emancipation
  - emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies,
  from prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty."   - Hubert H. Humphrey -

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• "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid,
  but most stupid people are conservatives."  &

  "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.  I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position as at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party . . . There is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power."
       - John Stuart Mill - ( British philosopher, economist, and liberal member of Parliament for Westminster from 1865 to 68 ).

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• "Why Liberals are more intelligent than Conservatives"
  an article in Psychology Today

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• "Be who you are and say what you feel,
  because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss -

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  - B -  Liberalism
  (at the community level)
  is aboutLiberating society :

• "All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves,
  as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince."
    - Plato

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• "In a democracy, it is the indigent, rather than the men of property,  who are the rulers." &
• "In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich,
  because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme." &
• "The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes." &
• "It is also in the interests of a tyrant to keep his people poor, so that they may not be able to afford the cost of protecting themselves by arms and be so occupied with their daily tasks that they have no time for rebellion." &
• "A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side."    - Aristotle

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• "As mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."   - George Washington

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• "That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all,
  and not to the few or the rich alone."  - Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.
• "Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term . . . to the general prey of the rich upon the poor." (which Jefferson himself didn't recognize in his own enslavement of poor black people) &
• "When the government fears the people, that is liberty.
  When the people fear the government, that is tyranny." &
• "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." &
• "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization,
  it expects what never was and never will be." &
• "Were it left to me to have a government with no newspapers, or newspapers with no government,
  I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter."
• Thomas Jefferson support for progressive property tax : "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.

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• "Unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations." - Andrew Jackson - His farewell address, 4 March 1837.

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• Abe Lincoln on the meaning of the word "liberty":
       "We all declare for liberty ;but in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor;while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty . And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names: liberty and tyranny. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty ." -
• Abe Lincoln on the relative importance of labor vs capital :
      "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

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• In his study of American politics, historian Alexis de Tocqueville praised the openness of our democratic system, but warned that "There will come a time when the rich and powerful try to kick the door closed."

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• "The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."   Theodore Roosevelt — (The Kansas City Star, 18 May, 1918)

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• "Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions.
  Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen."
  - the comedian, Mort Sahl -

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• Tommy Douglas, a liberal former Baptist preacher who became his country's most progressive premier (between 1961 & 1971) , who in 2002, was voted "the greatest Canadian of all time" by his countrymen.
• The following is a video (made perhaps in Douglas' own voice) of a famous speech made in 1962 by "Canada's most respected person", the beloved liberal Premier, Tommy Douglas, about a fictitious "Mouseland" (viewable at least in Firefox):

    In 2002, was voted "the greatest Canadian of all time" by his countrymen. (Of the ten other greatest Prime Ministers, #3, Pierre Elliott Trudeau  &  # 6, Lester B. Pearson, were also liberals -.
  

          The only conservative Prime Minister on the list was Sir John A. Macdonald, the very first person to fill that position, in the 1860's.) -
          See http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/ )
          ( Conservative Canadians may have viewed MacDonald as "great" because "Under the influence of former Prime Minister, and CPR lawyer, John A. MacDonald, Canada established the Indian Act in 1876, which reduced all Indians and (half-breed) Metis to the status of non-citizens and legal wards of the Canadian state. Henceforth, natives were to be imprisoned on "reserve land", denied any legal status or civil rights, and denied the right to vote, sue in court, own property or conduct any actions on their own behalf. Their status as legal wards of the state remains unchanged to the present day.)



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• "...liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies.
      What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'liberal?' If by 'liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "liberal."

      I'm proud to say I'm a 'liberal.' President John F. Kennedy

  "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

    - John F. Kennedy

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• No Man is an Island : John Donne's Meditation XVII :

  "All mankind is of one author, and is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated . . . As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come.  So this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

  No man is an island, entire of itself;  every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main .  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.  Any man's death diminishes me,  for I am involved in mankind, and therefore  never send to know for whom the bell tolls;   it tolls for thee ." - John Donne - (1572-1631)

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• On November 28, 1972, the New York Post reported these words, written by Albert Einstein :

  "A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.- This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection to a few persons nearest to us. (the essence of "conservatism)
      Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." (the essence of "liberalism")
   Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

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• In his 1907 retirement address, Joseph Pulitzer urged his successors to "always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."
• "The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head ."  - Noah Webster

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• "Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted,
  the indifference of those who should have known better,
  the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most,
  that has made it possible for evil to triumph."   - Haile Selassie I

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• "When will our consciences grow so tender that we are moved
  to prevent suffering,
  not just avenge it?" - Eleanor Roosevelt -

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• W.E.B. Dubois

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• "The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children;those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly;and those who are in the shadows of life - the sick, the needy, and the handicapped."   - Hubert H. Humphrey -

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• "First, each person should enjoy equally a full array of basic liberties. Second, public policy should raise as high as possible the social and economic well-being of society's worst-off individuals."  - John Rawls, political philosopher, in A Theory of Justice.

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• "The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France -

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• "Democrats (I think to myself) are liberals who believe the people are basically good, but that they need government help to organize their lives. They believe in freedom so fervently that they think it should be compulsory. They believe that the poor and ignorant are victims of an unfair system and that their circumstances can be improved if we give them help.
      Republicans (I think to myself) are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won't work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs." - Andy Rooney -

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• "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry,
  they call me a communist." - Dom Helder Camara - Archbishop of Recife in Brazil,
  one of the great prophets of Christian Liberation theology.

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• "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.."
• "When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."
• "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. . . We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." Letter from Birmingham Jail, Jan. 1963
• "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
  
      Martin Luther King, a model "Liberal Like Christ".

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• As the ruthless campaign manager and GOP chairman of the 70's and 80's, Lee Atwater did for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. what Karl Rove would later do for George W. Bush. However, when he was stricken with brain cancer in 1991, he had a deathbed conversion and said :

  "My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul."
      "I was wrong to follow the meanness of Conservatism. I should have been trying to help people instead of taking advantage of them. I don't hate anyone anymore. For the first time in my life I don't hate somebody. I have nothing but good feelings toward people. I've found Jesus Christ - It's that simple. He's made a difference." (in a February 1991 article for Life Magazine )

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• "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. "  &
• "Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that
  more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative." - John Kenneth Galbraith -

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• "Service is the rent we pay for the life we have been given."   - Marian Wright Edelman -

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• - Jimmy Carter -

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• "Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence : - wealth without work, - pleasure without conscience, - knowledge without character, - commerce without morality, - science without humanity, - worship without sacrifice, - politics without principle." - Mahatma Gandhi  (1869-1948) -

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Famous Quotes by Conservatives :

• You've probably heard the famous quote erroneously attributed to Winston Churchill's,
  "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain."
      Unfortunately for conservatives, not only is there is no record of anyone hearing Churchill speak those words. In the informed opinion of Paul Addison of Edinburgh University, "Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. (because) He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! [ see more at www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotations/135-quotes-falsely-attributed.]

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• "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!  And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" - Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, [ from his Acceptance Speech as the 1964 .]

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• "Someone who lacks independent wealth has no claim to
  even the smallest portion of food ..."
  - David Ricardo -  ( One of England's leading economists, a peer of Adam Smith)

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• "Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary, does not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal." - Benito Mussolini -

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• "What good fortune for those in power that people do not think." - Adolf Hitler -

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• "If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure nine will run into a ditch before they get to you."  ( Why try to avoid problems, when you believe - or hope - 90% of them will solve themselves?) - Calvin Coolidge -

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• "The man who builds a factory builds a temple; the man who works there worships there; and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise."
  - Conservative Republican President Calvin Coolidge -

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• "Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors . It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Gilbert K. Chesterton

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• "The Republic will cease to exist when you take away
  from those who are willing to work, to give to those who would not.
  - Thomas Jefferson -
    ( As great as Jefferson was in many respects, conservatives who quote these words of his don't seem to appreciate the irony of a white man who had black slaves doing all of his dirty work condemning people like himself for taking away from those who were forced to work for the benefit of those who would not work .)

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• “In this enlightened age, there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil in any country.   I think it, however, a greater evil to the white than to the black race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in…the latter (black), my sympathies are stronger for the former (white).
          The blacks are immeasurably better off (enslaved) here than (free) in Africa, morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing (for some 400 years) is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope will prepare and lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known and ordered (not by us white people, but) by a wise and merciful Providence."
   .- Gen. Robert E. Lee [ in an 1856 letter to his wife ]
  [ emphasis added by editor ]Saturday, August 01, 2020

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• "One man with courage makes a majority." &
  "It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." &
  "The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other." - Andrew Jackson -

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• "Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." - Greek Philosopher Socrates - c. 500 BC

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• "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic." - Karl Rove - at one of his birthday parties  
  (translation : "When they become more prosperous, some of the less intelligent Democrats can be fooled into becoming Republicans.")

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• The evil genius of FOX news network founder, Roger Ailes :
  

  WashingtonPost article on this.

  Famous Quotes about Conservatives :

• "These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people"
    - Abraham Lincoln -

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• "For in every city (nation) these two opposite parties (people vs aristocracy) are to be found, arising from the desire of the populace to avoid oppression of the great, and the desire of the great to command and oppress the people. . .
   " When the nobility see that they are unable to resist (control) the people, they come together (organize) to exalt one of their number and make him a prince, so as to be able to carry out their own designs under the shadow of his authority." - (Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. IX)

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• "All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."   - Lord Acton -
  one of England's greatest Catholic minds in a letter to fellow Catholic, Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887

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• "A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, but mainly sits."  - President Woodrow Wilson -

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• "Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."  - Will Rogers -

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• "Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
  - Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower - (in a letter to his brother Edgar on November 8, 1954)

  10 Policies for a better America

  In the Fall of 2008, YES magazine published a great article on a great many issues on which the majority of Americans agree. Here's a great poster that summarizes all of these issues.

  yesmagazine.org/pdf/47/Agenda_Poster11x17.pdf

  Although the article views the consensus on all of these issues as "non-partisan", I would argue that most of of the positions on these issues are more liberal than conservative.

  See the whole article at http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=2836.