Top 168 Progressives Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Progressives are concerned about reports of Muslim students feeling 'marginalized' and discriminated against after the shooting massacre by an Islamic terrorist in Orlando, but there is little concern that - for years - students in the United States have been taught to dislike their country.

I don't believe in lobbying only progressives and liberal members of Congress. I don't believe in doing interviews only with those who share my views. I want to reach a wider audience.

It's not enough just to elect people of color and women of color and progressives. We need to make sure that they have a work plan and that they are - continue to align with the communities that helped get them to where they're at.

Yes, we believe in globalization and trade, but we also believe in you being able to benefit from that more. For too long, we progressives have seemed like part of the system. We need to start thinking about whether or not it's delivering for us now.

Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but those conversations should not be part of a plan to avert the fiscal cliff.

The success of the long-established relationship between the liberal/socialist/progressives and the Black Talented Tenth has been due to their commonality in commitment to an ideology and self-aggrandizement above all else.

The precariat can be divided into three further groups - atavists, who look back to a lost past; nostalgics, who look forlornly for a present, a home; and progressives, who look for a lost future.

Progressives believe in making progress, which is why I'm proud to endorse Hillary Clinton, who I know will continue fighting to ensure our children and grandchildren can achieve their highest and best dreams.

Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer, fairer and cleaner, 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations; Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.

While freedom-loving people like libertarians and conservatives wish to provide the illumination of facts and the focus of reason for young people so that they might see and think clearly, those who call themselves progressives favor the classic totalitarian tactic of indoctrination.

I believe that we need to think very seriously, particularly as folks of color and progressives, about building either a new party or a new movement that can hold the Democratic Party accountable or provide a meaningful alternative.

At what point do [progressives] take off our partisan blinders and start wondering whether a very powerful faction of Democrats actually continues to SUPPORT President Bush and the War in Iraq?

When I walk around my neighborhood, the grocery store, or the farmers market, I don't see Democrats or Republicans, Progressives or Conservatives. I see my brothers and sisters - living, breathing human beings with diverse and complicated stories, views, and desires that can't be packaged neatly in a box.

I was always a reformer. My father and mother were progressives, and they believed in the universal vote, vote for women, land reform, and a lot of things which at one time were not accepted; they're much more accepted now.

Progressives are the majority; we won the popular vote by a long shot and Donald Trump and the congressional Republicans representing mainly rich old white men are a minority. If we stand up together and use the effective strategies and tactics the tea party used, we believe we can stop them.

Whenever a Republican gets in office, all of a sudden progressives realize that federalism and state's rights aren't necessarily only about defending slavery or Jim Crow. They're actually about maximizing freedom.

Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it's more than a set of rights.

The story wafts across the Atlantic, where it's picked up with glee by Catholic progressives and horror by some Catholic conservatives - and the battle of the blogs is on, full blast. No one bothers to ask whether there's any basis in fact for the assertion that this is going to be a "global-warming encyclical."

There are always two kinds of people in every country: Progressives and reactionaries; wise people and ignorant; democrats and fascists; libertarians and oppressive. All struggles happen between these two parties. If you are in the first group, your greatest reward will be dignity and victory!

By the end of the 20th century, "liberals" had again discredited themselves, to the point where they went back to calling themselves "progressives" to escape their past, much as people do when they declare bankruptcy.

Abstract sympathy with the working class as an economic entity is easy, but the feeling can vanish on contact with actual members of the group, who often arrive with disturbing beliefs and powerful resentments - who might not sound or look like people urban progressives want to know.

The new America, instead, is fast becoming a vast ghetto in which all of us, conservatives and progressives, are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government, whose job is to be good actors on TV and put on a good show.

Obama has seen to the passage of the most radical legislation in recent American history and so-called 'progressives' should be thanking him for it - even as many of the rest of us rear in horror from its implications.

In a way I almost feel like the election of Donald Trump has inspired Democrats and progressives and punk rockers in a way that hasn't been seen since Vietnam.

Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists.

While commentators on Fox and right-wing radio have the backing of Rupert Murdoch, a major Republican contributor, and other conservative corporations, progressives understand that their position is extremely vulnerable.

Bottom 10 Percent progressives are not enthusiastic about concentrations of wealth. But that's not what keeps them up at night. Their focus is on deprivation and lack of opportunity. They're motivated by empathy for people who are suffering, rather than outrage over unjustified wealth.

If we fail to meet our problems here, no one else in the world will do so. If we fail, the heart goes out of progressives throughout the world.

Progressives know there is something very wrong when a nation divided politically has one major network operating as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party and 90 percent of talk radio is dominated by right-wing extremists.

Democrats and progressives do well when the voter turnout is high. Republicans do well when the voter turnout is low.

A lot of conservative writers have twisted that argument in the conversation around Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel and said this is identity politics as played by liberals. And that I think what they're trying to say is that progressives are the first to say.

I think progressives understand that we are Americans at the same time as we are global citizens. We are interested first and foremost in creating peace and prosperity here at home, but we aren't blind to the fact that injustice anywhere in the world is meaningful, important, and worth thinking about.

The arrogance of liberal progressives is that they're just a lot smarter and better angels than the Stalins and the Chavezes and the Castros of the world, and if we give them all the control, and they control your life, they're going to do a great job of it. Well, it just isn't true.

The interesting thing for me is, if that had been a left-wing person raising questions, [President Obama] probably would have expressed his anger. Because Obama really does get upset about progressives.

The progressives like to talk a lot about poverty - and you should. However, it's the guys in the middle who have really been hurt by the global economy . The people at the bottom have been holding on to their jobs quite well, actually.

Very often when I see people who are perceived to be, or who call themselves progressives, sometimes I see an imbalance. Yes I understand the courage in their mind but I don't see the spirituality in their heart, good you are questioning the limits, but what about yourself, are you also liberating yourself?

Progressives make money and spend money on businesses that meet needs instead of kill people! The future is in meeting needs - unto the bourgeois business of cleaning the drapes! - not spewing death and destruction with kickbacks.

My parents called themselves progressives. The agenda was a Soviet America...the slogan of the communist party in those days was peace, jobs, democracy. Sound familar? The communist party is the democratic Party.

There's more roles now to fill since Trump's in. There's this refusal of power. I think progressives are actually literally uncomfortable with the exercise of power, because of what you learn. When you're too educated you understand the total disconnect of the exercise of power.

The most important thing will be building a bench of powerhouse progressives in elected office and in the next administration. [Bernie] Sanders has an enormous spotlight that he can shine on champions that are following the Sanders path of really building from the left.

Here's a more controversial idea: In general, Democrats and progressives ought to allow Trump considerable room to choose his own employees - far more room than Republicans allowed during the Obama administration. Tit-for-tat is a dangerous game.

For many progressives, 2016 will go down as a year of electoral shocks and profound disappointment. In the U.S., France and many other parts of Europe, the right enters 2017 with newfound confidence while the left recoils in fear of the future, unsure how to get back on the front foot.

I think if progressives stay at this, continue at the grassroots level to make the case that all Americans should have choice, all Americans ought to be able to hold insurance companies accountable, I think we will have 60 votes in the United States Senate for a strong bill.

The Democratic Party has to be run by progressives... because we can't let another monster like Donald Trump win again... even if we seem impolite in our fight back against him.

The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own.

Contrary to what we learn from progressives in education and the media, the history of the Democratic Party well into the twentieth century is a virtually uninterrupted history of thievery, corruption, and bigotry.

Once we're ignored or dismissed long enough, conservatives seem to just shrug our collective shoulders and accept defeat. It's this type of passivity that has allowed progressives to dominate film and television, universities and large swaths of the mainstream news media.

A lot of progressives really believe that if we can turn out one more white paper with bullet points about how to fix Problem X, we can fix it. But that's not primarily the way you reach people or move them. You reach the heart first.

Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries.

If I use Facebook to stay in touch with my high school friends who are church-going Republicans, I may be getting more ideological diversity than in hanging out with secular progressives on the World Politics sub-reddit.

For most progressives, what happens in families is a matter of "just" women's issues and children's issues. So progressive movements have focused primarily on dismantling the top of the dominator pyramid (politics and economics) and left its foundations (domination in family, gender, and other intimate relations) in place.

You will notice that the Occupy Wall Street crowds - and the progressives who support them - focus on bringing the wealthy down to earth rather than lifting the 99 percent. They have a nearly religious belief that too much wealth is fundamentally immoral and unhealthy for society.

When progressives talk about equity, they mean equal outcomes, not opportunities. They want a government that's so powerful, it owns everything and chooses how wealth is distributed to ensure equal outcomes. That in essence is socialism.

If progressives were interested in mitigating inequality, they would support the dynamism of free markets to allow the merit of ideas, products and services to win the day rather than stifle companies and pick winners in the name of imagined 'progress.'

Many progressives understand Scalia, and other conservative judges, in crassly political terms - as opponents of affirmative action, abortion, gun control, and campaign finance legislation. But what Scalia cared most about was clear, predictable rules, laid down in advance.

Progressives really do see America as guilty of crimes against humanity, and to them, our 'greatness' must be abandoned to atone for those crimes.

Because Bernie is going to bring in progressives and not lobbyists and people who are pro-corporate... for the establishment of the Democratic party, Bernie Sanders was more dangerous than Donald Trump.

Jonestown was supposed to be a great socialist experiment, a place where all the evil "isms" would be eradicated: racism, sexism, elitism. This appealed to blacks and white progressives alike. Fed up with racist "AmeriKKKa," they were going to start their own society, on their own terms.

It's shameful that the elites basically have one-and-a-half political parties. Working class men and women have zero parties - or they have half a party. That's exactly what progressives are upset about.

Trump gives progressives a way to channel whatever guilt they might have - whether from preventing homebuilding, benefitting from unfair taxes and pensions, or depriving black and Latino students the teacher quality and school funding they need - into a sanctimonious tribal rage against Republican racism.