Conservatism quotes:

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Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. -- William E. Gladstone
There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained. -- Ron Paul
Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed. -- Morris Raphael Cohen
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. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families. -- Mitt Romney
Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice. -- Tadashi Yanai
Liberalism is financed by the dividends from Conservatism. -- Craig Reucassel
Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals. -- Mark Twain
Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart. -- Garrett Hardin
There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism. -- Henry George
Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving. -- Robertson Davies
Conservatism... offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Conservatism is a hard choice for a society that has become accustomed to big government and big entitlements promoted by liberals. -- Jesse Helms
Conservatism is not about the party, because the party is merely the shell. It is the inside - it's the filling that really means something. -- Jonathan Krohn
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
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton
The future of Conservatism lies in our beliefs and values, not by throwing them away. We need to shed associations that bind us to past failures, but hold faith with those things that make us Conservatives. -- Iain Duncan Smith
Conservatism vests in and depends on the widespread, informed understanding of human nature, self-governance and the First Principle of Progress: free people interacting in free markets produce the greatest good for the greatest number always, but only, when tethered to virtue and morality. -- Mary Matalin
Conservatism is the politics of reality -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal. -- John Maynard Keynes
Conservatism solves problems libralism blows em up. -- Rush Limbaugh
Conservatism is the worship of dead revolutions. -- Clinton Rossiter
Liberalism is financed by the dividends from Conservatism. -- Craig Reucassel
Conservatism is only as good as what it conserves. -- Friedrich August von Hayek
The very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. -- Ronald Reagan
Conservatism is the maintenance of conventions already in force. -- Thorstein Veblen
Conservatism in general is bad, and it's racist and sexist. -- Rush Limbaugh
Conservatism in general is bad, and it's racist and sexist. -- Rush Limbaugh
Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principles are the founding principles. -- Mark Levin
Companionate Conservatism - Making the streets safer before people are kicked out onto them. -- Dennis Miller
Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism. -- Abraham Kuyper
Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success. -- Roger Scruton
Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt. -- Woodrow Wilson
Conservatism must be based on allowing everyone to become an owner - equity for everyman. -- John Redwood
The intellectual debility of contemporary conservatism is indicated by its silence on all important matters. -- Christopher Lasch
Conservatism as an "ism" is always going to be somewhat in tension with a political party. -- William Kristol
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button. -- Christopher Lasch
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? -- Abraham Lincoln
A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism. -- Lord Acton
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions. -- Sigmund Freud
A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic. -- Gough Whitlam
A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic; reformism is basically optimistic. -- Gough Whitlam
Conservatism is not a political ideology, it is a severe form of brain damage for which there's hardly any cure. -- Malachy McCourt
Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form. -- Thorstein Veblen
Conservatism has always been about reforming government and solving problems, and that's why the conservative movement should lead on immigration reform. -- Marco Rubio
Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future. -- Jill Lepore
American Conservatism is finished, and its remaining adherents are, whether they know it or not, merely ghosts wandering, mazed, in the daylight. -- Revilo P. Oliver
Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy. -- Greg Bear
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Conservatism is not a doctrine of contentment. Not a doctrine for the satisfied and the smug. It's a politics that's at war with the world. -- Thomas Frank
Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism. -- John Derbyshire
Conservatism has always meant more to me than simply sticking up for private property & free enterprise. It has also meant defending our heritage & preserving our values. -- Gerald R. Ford
[Conservatism:] Our revolutionary message ... is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation. -- Irving Kristol
Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man. -- Herbert Spencer
Conservatism's not the answer. The Republican Party has to reach out, moderate and modify its views to be able to accommodate radical Democrats, minorities, and so forth. -- Rush Limbaugh
Reality - Dreams = Animal Being Reality + Dreams = A Heart-Ache (usually called Idealism) Reality + Humor = Realism (also called Conservatism) Dreams - Humor = Fanaticism Dreams + Humor = Fantasy Reality + Dreams + Humor = Wisdom -- Lin Yutang
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. -- Bill Moyers
In the end, the difference between Conservatism and Liberalism seems to be this: the Conservative thinks of liberty as something to be preserved, the Liberal thinks of it as something to be enlarged. -- Clinton Rossiter
Conservatism is not the problem. Conservatism is the founding of this country, essentially. Conservatism isn't even really an ideology. Conservatism is just what is right, proper, decent, and moral. That's all it is. -- Rush Limbaugh
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same. -- George Orwell
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
Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things; the motto of one is "Prove all things and hold fast that which is good" and of the other "Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old." -- William Osler
I think the most basic difference between Liberalism and Conservatism today, at its core, is that Conservatives just seem to want a better world for themselves - while Liberals just seem to want a better world. -- Derek R. Audette
Conservative should tend to resist the argument that our particular crisis is a more-than-normal one, that our particular moment is a more-than-Madisonian one. Conservatism is a healthy political persuasion because it is inclined to shun alarmism. -- William Krystol
Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Conservatism is constitutionally opposed to public reason, and this explains the abandon with which so many conservative pundits embrace flagrant simulations of reason, constructed through the methods of public relations, and exhibit so little regard for the real thing. -- Philip E. Agre
Conservatism is an active intellectual pursuit; it requires a constant vigilance. It has nothing to do with feelings. Liberalism is the most gutless choice you can make. You just see suffering and say, 'Oh, I feel so horrible!' -- Rush Limbaugh
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. -- Bernadette Devlin
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.
Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration. These are different love languages. These languages turn on your view of change itself: When you think of America, do you see a country struggling to be maintained or one striving to be made better? -- Charles M. Blow
â??"I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution. -- Barry Goldwater
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. -- Alexis de Tocqueville
They offer me neither food nor drink - intellectual nor spiritual consolation... [Conservatism] leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal; it conforms to no intellectual standard, it is not safe, or calculated to preserve from the spoilers that degree of civilization which we have already attained. -- John Maynard Keynes
Not my political ideas. Conservatism didn't buy this house. First and foremost I'm a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime. -- Rush Limbaugh
Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times. -- Mark Levin
Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Suppose you had to remember to beat your heart, contract in exact sequence the muscles you use for every step. ... Conservatism comes out of the body, the sense of many things being done for us that any attempt to re-think, or even make conscious, would fatally disrupt. -- James Richardson
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To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. -- Michael Joseph Oakeshott
You know, conservatism is not a bad thing. It's not a pejorative. -- Michael Steele
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Because, you know, you're in Utah. And because of its political conservatism, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. -- Robert Redford
What I have been talking about for many years is opportunity conservatism, that every policy should focus like a laser on easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder. -- Ted Cruz
As with 'feminism,' not to mention 'liberalism' and 'conservatism,' 'political correctness' tends to mean what you want it to mean, which also pretty much amounts to utter meaninglessness. -- Meghan Daum
The point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state. -- Vladimir Putin
I embrace my blackness, just as I do my conservatism and my Christianity, but I don't want to be defined or pigeonholed by any one of the many elements that make up my character. -- J. C. Watts
I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future. -- Oliver Stone
Italy remained attached to conservatism. It had a political class that lived in the past and didn't build the future. The past is our strength, but it risks becoming our ruin if we walk with our heads turned backwards. -- Matteo Renzi
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Conservatism is, among many other things, a culture. The most important glue binding it together is a shared sense of cultural grievance - the conviction, uniting conservatives high and low, theocratic and plutocratic, neocon and paleocon, that someone, somewhere is looking down their noses at them with a condescending sneer. -- Rick Perlstein
Conservatism is not about leaving people behind. Conservatism is about empowering people to catch up, to give them the tools at their disposable that make it possible for them to access all the hope, all the promise, all the opportunity that America offers. And our programs to help them should reflect that. -- Marco Rubio
Conservatism is about the basic rights of individuals. God created us. As far as the government goes, the Founding Fathers based the Constitution off of Christian values. It goes hand-in-hand. As far as the Republican Party? I felt connected to it because individual freedom should not be legislated by the federal government. -- Joe Wurzelbacher
Judeo-Christian conservatism overcomes natural selfishness. -- Jim DeMint
Government is the enemy of conservatism and freedom. -- Ron Paul
Admirers can be a tremendous force for conservatism. -- Brian Eno
It is not about Republicanism, it's about conservatism. -- Mark Davis
What the heck would the establishment know about conservatism? -- Sarah Palin
My anti-liberal position should not be mistaken for conservatism ... -- Camille Paglia
You don't fight radical conservatism with not-quite-so radical conservatism. -- Salman Rushdie
Rebelling against the status quo was one of the definitions of conservatism. -- Rick Perlstein
Postwar Europe was morally stagnant, and there was a lot of neo-conservatism. -- Romola Garai
RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day. -- Ambrose Bierce
Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance. -- Agnes Repplier
Ted Cruz just in a different league. He understands conservatism because he is. -- Rush Limbaugh
Ted Cruz just in a different league. He understands conservatism because he is. -- Rush Limbaugh
The enemy isn't conservatism. The enemy isn't liberalism. The enemy is bulls**t. -- Lars-Erik Nelson
Tulsa has world-class opera and Starbucks, and a religious conservatism that rules public life. -- Anne Hull
My fear is that people associate Rand Paul's social conservatism with libertarianism, when it's not. -- Gary Johnson
At its core, conservatism is not an anti-government movement, and it's not a no-government movement. -- Marco Rubio
Social conservatism, business conservatism: the one side constitutes the other, like some infernal Mobius strip. -- Rick Perlstein
Leaders should not just talk about - but walk the walk of - fiscal conservatism. -- Michael Enzi
In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo. -- Tony Campolo
I don't really like labels in politics, but I will gladly accept the label of conservatism. -- Marco Rubio
I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with. -- Hillary Clinton
Compassionate conservatism [is] most importantly, making sure that government is not the answer to people's problems. -- George W. Bush
What I have advocated is not wild radicalism. It is the highest and wisest kind of conservatism. -- Theodore Roosevelt
Ostensibly rigorous and realistic, contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button." -- Christopher Lasch
Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness. -- William Kristol

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