conservatism quotes

Ronald Reagan used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the End Times foreshadowed in the Bible.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

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.

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.

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

In the last several years, I have been troubled by the right shift of the Republican party too far to the right.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

A new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind – the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.

When you’re young, you’re very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.