Conservatism Quotes - Page 5

• We're living in a world where conservatism is on the rise - from America to Europe and in Singapore, too. People are finding it hard to accept the 'other': those who are different, or who don't conform to societal expectations or norms.

  Ivan Heng

  People, Expectations, Different

  Source: www.broadwayworld.com

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• The meaning of conservatism is not that it impedes movement forward and upward, but that it impedes movement backwards and downwards—to chaotic darkness and the return to a primitive state.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Darkness, Movement, Return

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• All socio-political phenomena in the U.K. come laden with the baggage of a class-based theory or two attached to them. In the case of gay Tories, there is one particularly silly variant of the category, which asserts that gayness is bred in public schools and thus fits with Conservatism like hand in glove.

  Evan Davis

  Love, Silly, School

  "Glad to be gay, glad to be Tory" by Evan Davis, www.theguardian.com. April 20, 2012.

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• Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Change, Chaos, Bureaucracy

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• If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.

  Tom Wolfe

  Conservative, Liberalism, Government Politics

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• I get grumpy about the innate conservatism of our tastes; I love bold theatre, and I get annoyed when a heritage piece is really successful.

  Romola Garai

  Successful, Annoyed, Theatre

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• The neo-conservatives, who are closely linked to the neo-corporatists, are rather different. They claim to be conservatives, when everything they stand for is a rejection of conservatism. They claim to present an alternate social model, when they are little more than the courtiers of the corporatist movement. Their agitation is filled with the bitterness and cynicism typical of courtiers who scramble for crumbs at the banquet tables of real power, but are always denied a proper chair.

  John Ralston Saul

  Real, Rejection, Bitterness

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• 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.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Buddhist, Morning, Spring

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• The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

  Mark Twain

  Views, Politics, Next

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.16, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

  Cornel West

  Color, Skills, White

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• But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

  T. S. Eliot

  Discipline, Political, Relaxation

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Christianity and Culture”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But I have to say this in defense of humankind: In no matter what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got here. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these games going on that could make you act crazy, even if you weren't crazy to begin with. Some of the crazymaking games going on today are love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf, and girls' basketball.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Basketball, Girl, Hate

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• Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Grandmother, Political, Doubt

  Woodrow Wilson (1986). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• Liberalism, contrary to popular belief, is facing backward in considering the injustice of its ancestors. Conservatism, contrary to popular belief, is facing forward in considering the psychology of its descendants. Definitively, it seems in the modern world that neither side really knows which direction it's facing, and men of the sharpest judgment are simply turned off from picking either of the poisons.

  Criss Jami

  Men, Psychology, Poison

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• Caution and conservatism are expected of old age; but when the young men of a nation are possessed of such a spirit, when they are afraid of the noise and strife caused by the applications of the truth, heaven save the land! Its funeral bell has already rung.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Land, Heaven

  Henry Ward Beecher, Augusta Moore (1859). “Notes from Plymouth Pulpit: A Collection of Memorable Passages from the Discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, with a Sketch of Mr. Beecher and the Lecture Room”, p.57

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• Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Men, Important, Exploration

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (1959). “Up from Liberalism”

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• It is liberalism, whether people like it or not, which has animated all the years of my life. What on Earth did conservatism ever accomplish for our country?

  Charles Kuralt

  Country, Years, Liberal Media

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• A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic.

  Gough Whitlam

  Optimistic, Government, Expectations

  "The Whitlam Government, 1972-1975". Book by Gough Whitlam, 1985.

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• 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.

  Barry Goldwater

  Spiritual, Philosophy, Men

  Barry Goldwater (2010). “The Conscience of a Conservative”, p.11, Bottom of the Hill

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• 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.

  Barry Goldwater

  Goodbye, Religious, Philosophy

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• Darwin's prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.

  Niles Eldredge

  Fossils, Lineage, Records

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• I want the American people to understand that conservatism... is an ideology of protecting the people and the people's rights.

  Jonathan Krohn

  Rights, People, Want

  "William F. Buckley’s bar mitzvah speech" by Mike Madden, www.salon.com. February 28, 2009.

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• The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Fighting, Names

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2001). “Nature, Addresses and Lectures”, p.279, The Minerva Group, Inc.

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• Ambition will take you And ride you too far and Conservatism bring you to boredom once more Sit down by the river And watch the stream flow Recall all the dreams That you once used to know The things you've forgotten That took you away To pastures not greener but meaner.

  Van Morrison

  Dream, Ambition, Rivers

  Song: I'm Tired Joey Boy

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• Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Running, Regret, Past

  "The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14, 1957.

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