“In a liberal system, society and nation are nothing but an aggregation of competing individuals. What holds them together is the Constitution and the market economy. There is no nation – or if there is, it is only a political nation... When there is no nation, there is no community and no community interest. In essence this is the relationship between the individual and society from a liberal point of view.”

—  Viktor Orbán

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In a liberal system, society and nation are nothing but an aggregation of competing individuals. What holds them togeth…" by Viktor Orbán?
Viktor Orbán photo
Viktor Orbán18
Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz 1963

Related quotes

John Robert Seeley photo

“… The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one State are three, common nationality, common religion, and common interest.”

John Robert Seeley (1834–1895) British historian

p. 50 https://books.google.com/books?id=Zsm3TLe1cAUC&amp;pg=PA50 <br class="br">The Expansion of England (1883)

Abdullah Öcalan photo

“The national question is not a phantasm of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless it was capitalist modernity which imposed the national question on society. The national society replaced religious community. However, the transition to a national society needs to overcome capitalist modernity if the nation is not to remain a disguise for repressive monopolies.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism

Abdullah Öcalan photo

“The national question is not a phantasm of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless it was capitalist modernity which imposed the national question on society. The national society replaced religious community. However, the transition to a national society needs to overcome capitalist modernity if the nation is not to remain a disguise for repressive monopolies.”

Abdullah Öcalan (1949) Founder of the PKK

Source: The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan (2017), Democratic Confederalism, p. 47

Desmond Tutu photo

“Without forgiveness there can be no future for a relationship between individuals or within and between nations.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in "Truth and reconciliation" at BBC Focus on Africa (January-March 2000)

John Quincy Adams photo

“Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

Letter to James Lloyd (1 October 1822)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the Guildhall, London (9 November 1866), quoted in The Times (10 November 1866), p. 9
1860s

A. James Gregor photo

“What distinguished Gentile’s Fascist rationale from that which came to characterize the legitimating rationale of Marxist-Leninism was Gentile’s identification of the nation—rather than the ‘proletariat’—as the community of destiny that would shape our time. For Gentile, proletarians represented only component elements of a larger organic community: the nation. In the modern world, only the nation could provide the material, intellectual, political, and moral environment in which the individual might find fulfillment.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: The Phoenix: Fascism in Our Time, (1999), p. 100

“Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control.”

Robert Gilpin (1930–2018) Political scientist

Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter Five, The Politics Of International Trade, p. 189

Joseph Goebbels photo

“The sin of bourgeois patriotism was to confound a certain economic form with the national. It connected two things that are entirely different. Forms of the economy, however firm they may seem, are changeable. The national is eternal. If I mix the eternal and the temporal, the eternal will necessarily collapse when the temporal collapses. This was the real cause for the collapse of liberal society. It was rooted not in the eternal, but in the temporal, and when the temporal declined it took the eternal down with it. Today it is only an excuse for a system that brings growing economic misery. That is the only reason why international Jewry organizes the battle of the proletarian forces against both powers, the economy and the nation, and defeat them.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Vikram Sarabhai photo

“We are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man's society.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

On the development of Indian Space Researach progarmme which he headed and the notable success achieved in the field.
Variant: But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the community of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society.

Related topics