quotations about conservatives
Conservatives are like the people at a party who know the lyrics to all the songs--and we're the ones who can only hum. That's because they have a fairly simple philosophy, one that's easy to memorize.
BERNIE HORN
Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People
Conservatism is purely an ad hoc affair; its findings vary with conditions, and are good for this day and train only.
ALBERT JAY NOCK
The Atlantic Monthly, October 1936
The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism, and this is really not new. People are surprised to hear this. But the republican party formative event of conservativism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think "conservative". They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater. They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives: they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers, they're embarrassing to have to go to convention with them, and they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party.
RUSH LIMBAUGH
On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren, December 15, 2011
To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.
JANEANE GAROFALO
Majority Report, Jun. 3, 2005
Conservatism is a defense of established hierarchies, but it is also fearful of those established hierarchies. It sees in their assuredness of power the source of corruption, decadence and decline. Ruling regimes require some kind of irritant, a grain of sand in the oyster, to reactivate their latent powers, to exercise their atrophied muscles, to make their pearls.
COREY ROBIN
interview with Henry Farrell, February 1, 2018
The perils of change are so great, the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.
ROBERT GASCOYNE-CECIL
The Quartely Review, 1865
Progressives seem to think that conservatives distrust the government because of some esoteric philosophical theory, or because we had some weird dream involving Ayn Rand. In reality, it's because we've been told to trust the government before -- and we've gotten burned, time and time again.
JIM GERAGHTY
"Ten Reasons We Can't and Shouldn't Be Nordic", National Review, March 12, 2018
A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
WOODROW WILSON
attributed, Democrats and Republicans: Rhetoric and Reality
Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing they become fanatics about conservatism.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas -- uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
speech, Feb. 6, 1990
The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
ROGER SCRUTON
"Eliot and Conservatism", A Political Philosophy
Conservatives do not believe that political struggle is the most important thing in life... The simplest among them prefer fox-hunting--the wisest religion.
QUINTIN HOGG
The Case for Conservatism
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Sunday Telegraph, Jul. 2, 1967
The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o' clock and the Conservatives at eight.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The conservative is a person who considers very closely every chance, even the longest, of "throwing out the baby with the bath-water," as the German proverb puts it, and who determines his conduct accordingly.
ALBERT JAY NOCK
The Atlantic Monthly, October 1936
I never meant to say that the conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
JOHN STUART MILL
letter to Conservative MP John Pakington, March 1866
Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.
MORT SAHL
attributed, Moments of Clarity
Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK
The Road to Serfdom
Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas--an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives.... Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.
MORRIS RAPHAEL COHEN
The Faith of a Liberal
A conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather.
JOHN HOWARD
The Howard Era