Browsing Topic Best Conservatism Quotes

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.

I don’t understand how the Republican party is the party with the reputation for fiscal conservatism and fiscal sanity, when they’re the ones who run up the debt. It was Reagan who ran up the debt and now Bush is doing it again, and in between, Clinton and Bush’s father, I must say, worked so hard to get that deficit and that debt down.

Buddhism holds that everything is in constant flux. Thus the question is whether we are to accept change passively and be swept away by it or whether we are to take the lead and create positive changes on our own initiative. While conservatism and self-protection might be likened to winter, night, and death, the spirit of pioneering and attempting to realize ideals evokes images of spring, morning, and birth.

When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.

In my estimation, there should always be a mixture of economic liberalism – which means small government, a great emphasis on markets – but also a certain degree of social conservatism, not to favor change unless that change is beneficial. So I describe myself as an economic liberal and a social conservative.

Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.

Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism.

Tulsa has world-class opera and Starbucks, and a religious conservatism that rules public life.

I am not a conservative — neo or paleo. Conservatism is a respectable outlook… I just do not happen to be that animal.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into the military mind is to get an old one out.

When the Republican Party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism then clearly I would argue that we’ve lost our way.

A conservative party that reshapes its self-presentation according to the suggestions of the liberal media, of course, may very well get what such lack of courage deserves. Having been told by their opponents for years that the key to Republican victory was a softening of the message and more smiles, Republicans have now apparently taken a big dose of this medicine. One might counsel more caution in accepting medicine from one’s enemies.

William Graebner’s brilliant analysis of America’s struggles over the meaning of Patty Hearst gives us not only new perspectives on the 1970s, on Americans’ fundamental understandings of their world in a bicentennial year that offered little to celebrate, but also on the longing for heroism and the desire for belief in free will that Graebner believes structured the rise of Reagan-era conservatism. This is a masterful work of cultural history.

Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man’s spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand,— in the name of a concern for human beings— regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society.

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Conservatism… offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date. This charge is preposterous and we ought to boldly say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline. These principles are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation. To suggest that the Conservative philosophy is out of date is akin to saying that the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments or Aristotle’s Politics are out of date.

This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.

I think essentially corrupting institutions in Washington are turning conservatism into something that is really very creepy, but also emotionally and psychically powerful for people.

People want results. I call it ‘results oriented conservatism,’ R.O.C. because that’s what people want out of government.

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon,for each day to have a new and different sun.

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn’t stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static.

The oldest philosophy in the world is conservatism, and I go clear back to the first Greeks. … When you say ‘radical right’ today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.

It is one of history’s great tragedies that American conservatism, born in part in resistance to Soviet torture, should end by endorsing it in America, by Americans.

Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.

Look, I’m a conservative, I’m a very conservative guy, and – and the Trump campaign is making your job over at NBC really, really, really easy in terms of going after conservatives and Republicans if he’s the standard bearer for conservatism.

The [Sarah ]Palin endorsement as sort of vouching for Donald Trump is all about. She is the sort of tribune of not conservatism as ideology.

Among the best traitors Ireland has ever had, Mother Church ranks at the very top, a massive obstacle in the path to equality and freedom. She has been a force for conservatism… to ward off threats to her own security and influence.

David Frum has been saying – [Donald] Trump is all about conservatism as identity, not conservatism as ideology.

I think, any politician, you have to hold them to their word. And conservatives run on fiscal conservatism. .