“Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world. Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev, assisted in the end of an ideology, which once offered hope, and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision, which will lead to progress, but this time, we hope, without tyranny.”
What’s Left After 1989? http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma31
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Ian Buruma 4
Dutch writer and academic 1951Related quotes

“We should neither bemoan nor naively idealize this new reality. We should deal with it.”
Quotes, IPI speech (2000)
Context: We are now in a new era. To label this time "the post-Cold War era" belies its uniqueness and its significance. We are now in a Global Age. Like it or not, we live in an age when our destinies and the destinies of billions of people around the globe are increasingly intertwined. When our grand domestic and international challenges are also intertwined. We should neither bemoan nor naively idealize this new reality. We should deal with it.

Speech to the US Congress (13 October 1949)
Context: We have achieved political freedom but our revolution is not yet complete and is still in progress, for political freedom without the assurance of the right to live and to pursue happiness, which economic progress alone can bring, can never satisfy a people. Therefore, our immediate task is to raise the living standards of our people, to remove all that comes in the way of the economic growth of the nation. We have tackled the major problem of India, as it is today the major problem of Asia, the agrarian problem. Much that was feudal in our system of land tenure is being changed so that the fruits of cultivation should go to the tiller of the soil and that he may be secure in the possession of the land he cultivates. In a country of which agriculture is still the principal industry, this reform is essential not only for the well-being and contentment of the individual but also for the stability of society. One of the main causes of social instability in many parts of the world, more especially in Asia, is agrarian discontent due to the continuance of systems of land tenure which are completely out of place in the modem world. Another — and one which is also true of the greater part of Asia and Africa — is the low standard of living of the masses.
Singer, Edgar A. "Esthetic and the Rational Ideal. II." The Journal of Philosophy 23.10 (1926): 258-268; Partly cited in: William Gerber. Anatomy of what We Value Most, Rodopi, 1997, p. 55

Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)

On the Conservative Party; Skidelsky (1992:231) quoting Collected Writings Volume IX page 296-297

In Dagbladet (6 October 2004) http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/10/06/410404.html

Lecture IV. The Decline of the Rule of Law - 25. The Task for Liberty- Loving Statesmen
1940s–1950s, The Political Ideal of the Rule of Law (1955)