For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility.

Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.

The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility.

The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way.

This weakening is worsened by the widening distance between the governed and their governments.

Yes, the European model remains superior to that of America and Japan.

This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare, where nobody is responsible for anything.

My problem is how to find the best way of being useful.

We have to struggle against the conservatives from all sides, not only the right-wingers, but also the left-wing conservatives who don't want to change anything.

My presidential victory, if it had happened, would have been artificial in relation to the Socialist party. It may be that on my deathbed, I will come to regret my decision, but for the moment, I live at peace with it.

Any union that can't accept workers choosing their own representatives through universal franchise is finished.

The problem of how we finance the welfare state should not obscure a separate issue: if each person thinks he has an inalienable right to welfare, no matter what happens to the world, that's not equity, it's just creating a society where you can't ask anything of people.

These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls.

For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility.

I cannot resign myself to the decline of Europe, and of France.

If you don't have collective agreements between unions and employers, governments have to legislate more.

The unions may continue to decline, but if they do, it'll be their fault.

I had to think whether, after 50 years of hard slog, I was still lucid and fresh enough for the job.

Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.

The countries that share this conception should be able to go further together, without excluding the others, since they can still live in a greater community of exchange and co-operation.

Even in Britain, the trade unions tell me that employment contracts have less protection than in the past.

The driving force behind the liberal counter-offensive in Europe has been a reaction against irresponsibility.

The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws.

I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan.

Cinema explains American society. It's like a Western, with good guys and bad guys, where the weak don't have a place.

The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market.

This desire for equity must not lead to an excess of welfare where nobody is responsible for anything.

The desire for liberty has also made itself felt as struggle against domestic tyranny or arbitrary rule.

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.

When liberty returns, I will return.

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

For the next century, the Republicans have agreed that we will promote the dignity and future of every individual by building a free society under a limited, accountable government that protects liberty, security and prosperity for a brighter American dream.

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.

I come before you to declare that my sex are entitled to the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defense of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

IT has been observed by several gentlemen, in vindication of this motion, that if it should be carried, neither my life, liberty, nor estate will be affected.

To threaten the institution is to threaten fair administration of justice and protection of liberty.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

They will sustain the constitution and laws and institutions of the United States, and be the champions of liberty and of that constitution when its integrity shall be threatened.

As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.