Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse Quotes

If the child was helpless, was the grown up person, man or woman, in a much better position?

If there is one law for the Government and another for it's subjects, one for noble and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law does not guarantee liberty for all.

To be effective men must act together, and to act together they must have a common understanding and a common object.

Compulsion may be necessary for the purposes of external order, but it adds nothing to the inward life that is the true being of a man.

The first condition of universal freedom, that is to say, is a measure of universal restraint. Without such restraint some men may be free but others will be unfree.

Great changes are not caused by ideas alone; but they are not effected without ideas.

He is a citizen of the world in that he represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world.

At all times men have lived in societies, and ties of kinship and of simple neighbourhood underlie every form of social organization.

To move towards harmony is the persistent impulse of the rational being, even if the goal lies always beyond the reach of accomplished effort.

There is no line drawn beyond which human obligations cease. There is no gulf across which the voice of human suffering cannot be heard, beyond which massacre and torture cease to be execrable. Simply as a patriot, again, a man should recognize that a nation may become great not merely by painting the map red, or extending her commerce beyond all precedent, but also as the champion of justice, the succourer of the oppressed, the established home of freedom.

The fancied clearness of Utopian vision is illusory, because its objects are artificial ideas and not living facts.

Excess of liberty contradicts itself. In short, there is no such thing; there is only liberty for one and restraint for another. If liberty then be regarded as a social ideal, the problem of establishing liberty must be a problem of organizing restraints; and thus the conception of a liberty which is to set an entire people free from its government appears to be a self-contradictory ideal.

The more a class is brought low, the greater its difficulty in rising again without assistance. For purposes of legislation the State has been exceedingly slow to accept this view.

The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth.

Thirteen months ago, Mr. , who had surprised the world by joining Mr. 's , surprised it still further by coming forward with a proposal which would have rendered the work of the Tariff Commission superfluous. The object of the Commission was to draw up a scientific tariff, the essence of which was to be a nicely graduated scale of import duties adapted to the needs of British industry, as conceived by Mr. Chamberlain and his followers. Such a scheme, whatever its merits or demerits, must necessarily be complex in the last degree.