“Life is great if properly viewed in any aspect; it is mainly great when viewed in connection with the world to come.”

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: But is the anatomy of man not a more painful science still?—that science which leads us to dip our hands into the blood of our fellow-beings to pry with impassible curiosity into parts and organs which once palpitated with life? And yet who dreams this day of raising his voice against the study? Who does not applaud, on the contrary, the numerous advantages which it has conferred on humanity? The time is come for studying the moral anatomy of also, and for uncovering its most afflicting aspects, with the view of providing remedies.

Speech at the Langham Hotel (11 February 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 197.
1926

per Irving Norton Fisher in a speech to the Yale socialists club 1911 http://praxeology.net/WGS-Anarchy.htm.

"Uncovering the Real Abe Lincoln : What I See in Lincoln's Eyes" Time Magazine (26 June 2005)
2005

Stig Bjorkman interview <!-- p. 17-18 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: My basic view of things is — not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don't exist any longer... I've a strong impression that our world is about to go under. Our political systems are deeply compromised and have no further uses. Our social behavior patterns — interior and exterior — have proved a fiasco. The tragic thing is, we neither can nor want to, nor have the strength to alter course. It's too late for revolutions, and deep down inside ourselves we no longer even believe in their positive effects. Just around the corner an insect world is waiting for us — and one day it's going to roll in over our ultra-individualized existence. Otherwise I'm a respectable social democrat.

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 149-150.
1923
Context: The great task of this generation, in my view, is to save democracy, to preserve it and to inspire it. The ideal of democracy is a very fine one, but no ideals can run of themselves... All government of the people can be presented, as it were, on the circumference of a wheel, and government runs in very varying degree from the most complete and absolute autocracy, step by step, to chaos, and you find instances in history of governments passing through every phase on that circumference... Now we are at a point in that wheel, and that point is Democracy, with representative government. We have to remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and, I may add, eternal knowledge, eternal sympathy, and eternal understanding; and it is our duty in this generation to keep the State steady at the point to which we have attained, knowing full well the risks that lie on either hand by slipping back in the one direction of the wheel or the other, the one direction drawing to a curtailment of our liberty, the other direction being that in which liberty tends to licence.

Up from Liberalism (1959); also quoted in The American Dissent : A Decade of Modern Conservatism (1966) by Jeffrey Peter Hart, p. 171
Variants:
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
As quoted in The Nastiest Things Ever Said about Democrats (2006) by Martin Higgins, p. 93
Liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, but it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.
As quoted in his obituary in The TImes (28 February 2008) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3447250.ece.