Success Quote by George Soros

Soros’s definition of an “open society” reads like a calm piece of liberal engineering, but it’s also a defensive brief. The key move is the phrase “compatible with the interests of others”: freedom is granted, yes, but only under a rule that quietly disqualifies the freedoms that curdle into domination. That’s not a poetic flourish; it’s a boundary line drawn after watching “freedom” get weaponized by authoritarians, oligarchs, and majorities convinced they can vote away pluralism.

As a businessman-financier who made his name in markets built on volatility and imperfect information, Soros is unusually attuned to systems that can collapse when one actor gets too much leverage. In that light, the quote borrows the language of individual choice while smuggling in a structural claim: societies need constraints to stay free. The subtext is a rebuke to two convenient stories. One is libertarian minimalism, where “pursuing their interests” is treated as self-justifying even when it produces coercive monopolies or captured states. The other is nationalist or ideological certainty, where “the people” becomes a license to crush dissent.

The context matters because Soros isn’t selling abstract philosophy; he’s defending a contested political project he bankrolled through the Open Society Foundations. The line is designed to sound commonsense while insisting on something many publics resist: openness requires active maintenance - courts, rights protections, transparent institutions - precisely because not every “interest” deserves equal room to expand.