[L]iberalism is above all an attitude toward life and society based on tolerance and respect, a love for culture, a desire to coexist with others and a firm defense of freedom as a supreme value. A freedom that is, at the same time, the driving force of material progress, of science, arts, and letters, and of a civilization that has produced sovereign individuals, with their independence, their rights, and their responsibilities that are always held in balance with those of other individuals, protected by a legal system that guarantees coexistence within diversity. Economic freedom is a key element of liberal doctrine but certainly not the only one.

Liberalism is the philosophy for our time, because it does not try to conserve every tradition of the past, because it does not apply to new problems the old doctrinaire solutions, because it is prepared to experiment and innovate and because it knows that the past is less important than the future.

I have a broad definition... Liberalism is a doctrine that was developed in the middle of the 17th century, at the end of Europe's wars of religion, in which a number of early liberal thinkers... said we need to lower the aspirations of politics, not to seek after "the good life" as defined by a particular religious doctrine, but simply to protect life itself by cultivating a virtue of tolerance, whereby, at that time Protestants and Catholics, but... today maybe and could live together peacefully, allowing each to individually choose... what to believe, what to speak, and the like. It believes that all human beings are endowed with a certain basic level of dignity that is equal among all those human beings, and it is institutionalized through a rule of law, by constitutional provisions that prevent the excessive power of the state to limit individual choice. It's not necessarily associated with a particular economic ideology, except that it does protect private property rights... [S]o you can have an expansive social democratic government, like in Sweden or Denmark, or you can have a more limited one like in the United States... [T]hose are all... liberal societies because of that commitment to rule of law.

The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights, subject only to the proviso that he not interfere with the freedom of other individuals to do the same. This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another.

In its origin, liberalism had no ambition to be universal either in the sense of claiming to be valid for everyone and every human society or in the sense of purporting to give an answer to all the important questions of human life. … The ideal of liberalism is a practically engaged political philosophy that is both epistemically and morally highly abstemious. That is, at best, a very difficult and possibly a completely hopeless project. It is therefore not surprising that liberals succumb again and again to the temptation to go beyond the limits they would ideally like to set for themselves and try to make of liberalism a complete philosophy of life. … In the middle of the twentieth century, Kantianism presented itself as a “philosophical foundation” for a version of liberalism, and liberals at that time were sufficiently weak and self-deceived (or strong and opportunistic) to accept the offer.

The high tenet of this philosophy (Liberalism) is that Liberty is an endowment from the Creator of every individual man and woman upon which no power, whether economic or political, can encroach, and that not even the government may deny. And herein it challenges all other philosophies of society and government; for all others, both before and since, insist that the individual has no such unalienable rights, that he is but the servant of the state. Liberalism holds that man is master of the state, not the servant; that the sole purpose of government is to nurture and assure these liberties. All others insist that Liberty is not a God-given right; that the state is the master of the man.

Liberalism means an intelligent effort to keep the political and economic development of our nation abreast of the responsibilities that come from an atomic age. It means an extension of the use of our resources for the common good, the solving of the problem of maintaining democratic principles and free competitive enterprise in a day of Big Business, Big Unions, and Big Government.

The pragmatic justification is that liberalism is... a political doctrine that seeks to enable societies to govern themselves over diversity. It arose in the minds of thinkers like Thomas Hobbes or John Locke or Samuel Pufendorf... as a result of the European wars of religion following the Protestant Reformation.

Liberalism is fundamentally an ideology of liberation that has throughout history risen in protest against the totalitarian and anti-human movements of various kinds, such as communism and nazism. It is therefore natural that the Progress Party with its liberal base once again stands first in the line and takes up the fight when a new fascist ideology as Islamism is spreading throughout the world.

What do we mean by this Liberalism of which we talk? … I should say it means the acknowledgement in practical life of the truth that men are best governed who govern themselves; that the general sense of mankind, if left alone, will make for righteousness; that artificial privileges and restraints upon freedom, so far as they are not required in the interests of the community, are hurtful; and that the laws, while, of course, they cannot equalise conditions, can, at least, avoid aggravating inequalities, and ought to have for their object the securing to every man the best chance he can have of a good and useful life.

Now by Liberalism I mean false liberty of thought, or the exercise of thought upon matters, in which, from the constitution of the human mind, thought cannot be brought to any successful issue, and therefore is out of place. Among such matters are first principles of whatever kind; and of these the most sacred and momentous are especially to be reckoned the truths of Revelation. Liberalism then is the mistake of subjecting to human judgment those revealed doctrines which are in their nature beyond and independent of it, and of claiming to determine on intrinsic grounds the truth and value of propositions which rest for their reception simply on the external authority of the Divine Word.

Of which liberalism does one wish to speak? I distinguish two principal forms of liberalism. For one… liberty is a right; for the other a duty. For one it is a gift; for the other a conquest… One liberalism conceives liberty rooted in the individual, and therefore opposes the individual to the State, a State understood as possessing no intrinsic value—but exclusively serving the well being and the improvement of the individual. The State is seen as a means, not an end. It limits itself to the maintenance of public order, excluding itself from the entirety of spiritual life—which, therefore, remains exclusively a sphere restricted to the individual conscience. That liberalism, historically, is classical liberalism—of English manufacture. It is, we must recognize, a false liberalism, containing only half the truth. It was opposed among us by Mazzini with a criticism, that I maintain, is immortal. But there is another liberalism, that matured in Italian and German thought, that holds entirely absurd this view of the antagonism between the State and the individual.

Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic.

The principle of liberalism is to have no fixed principle and to contend that this is in itself a principle.