“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence. On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.”

— Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655
Leader of the Opposition

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Margaret Thatcher 348

British stateswoman and politician 1925–2013

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“I place a profound belief—indeed a fervent faith—in the virtues of self reliance and personal independence.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

On these is founded the whole case for the free society, for the assertion that human progress is best achieved by offering the freest possible scope for the development of individual talents, qualified only by a respect for the qualities and the freedom of others...For many years there has been a subtle erosion of the essential virtues of the free society. Self-reliance has been sneered at as if it were an absurd suburban pretention. Thrift has been denigrated as if it were greed. The desire of parents to choose and to struggle for what they themselves regarded as the best possible education for their children has been scorned.
Speech to Conservative Central Council (15 March 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102655
Leader of the Opposition

“For the first time the personality is deliberately cultivated as such; and from that time [the European Renaissance] until today it has not been possible to separate the achievements of a civilization from the achievements of the individuals composing it. I have not the slightest doubt that this form of individuation represents a higher stage in the evolution of mankind. The future unit is the individual, a world in himself, self-contained and self-creative, freely giving and freely receiving, but essentially a free spirit.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: The Philosophy of Anarchism (1940), P. 11-12

“America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty. Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amid the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen. By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

“The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

“Fundamental to everything the [ancient] Greeks achieved was their conviction that good for humanity was possible only if men were free, body, mind, and spirit, and if each man limited his own freedom. A good state or work of art or piece of thinking was possible only through the self-mastery of the free individual, self-government.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Introduction
The Echo of Greece (1957)

“The goal that the Obama team has is to fundamentally replace the historic America of self-reliance, independence, the work ethic, the people who go out and achieve because they spend their lifetime doing the right things. And they want to replace it with a politician-dominated redistributionist bureaucracy. Which in the essence would mean the end of America as it has been for the last 400 years.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-05-17
2010-05-17
On Beck's radio show, Gingrich says Obama admin. is trying to "end … America as it has been for the last 400 years"
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005170030
2011-03-30
2010s

“The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

L'Unité d'un Homme (November 1994), quoted in The Times (21 November 1994), p. 11
President of the European Commission

“We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government — a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, State of the Union Address (1975)

“Echoing the Christian faith in free will, humanists hold that human beings are – or may someday become – free to choose their lives. They forget that the self that does the choosing has not itself been chosen.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 86)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

“Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

"Communism. The Production of the Form of Intercourse Itself",
The Marx-Engels Reader
The German Ideology (1845/46)

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Margaret Thatcher 348

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