Best 633 quotes in «conservative quotes» category

  • By Anonym

    Thatcher set ordinary people free, but into a landscape that her other policies had already shaped to suit other, more powerful interests, such as large corporations or Britons with inherited wealth.

  • By Anonym

    That effort to undermine competitive markets is no better in the market for labor than it is for goods and services.

  • By Anonym

    That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

  • By Anonym

    The conduct of affairs, for the Rationalist, is a matter of solving problems, and in this no man can hope to be successful whose reason has become inflexible by surrender to habit or is clouded by the fumes of tradition. In this activity the character which the Rationalist claims for himself is the character of the engineer, whose mind (it is supposed) is controlled throughout by appropriate technique and whose first step is to dismiss from his attention everything not directly related to his specific intentions. The assimilation of politics to engineering is, indeed, what may be called the myth of rationalist politics. And it is, of course, a recurring theme in the literature of Rationalism. The politics it inspires may be called the politics of the felt need; for the Rationalist, politics are always charged with the feeling of the moment. He waits upon circumstance to provide him with his problems, but rejects its aid in their solution. That anything should be allowed to stand between a society and the satisfaction of the felt needs of each moment in its history must appear to the Rationalist a piece of mysticism and nonsense. And his politics are, in fact, the rational solution of those practical conundrums which the recognition of the sovereignty of the felt need perpetually creates in the life of a society. Thus, political life is resolved into a succession of crises, each to be surmounted by the application of "reason." Each generation, indeed, each administration, should see unrolled before it the blank sheet of infinite possibility. And if by chance this tablula vasa has been defaced by the irrational scribblings of tradition-ridden ancestors, then the first task of the Rationalist must be to scrub it clean; as Voltaire remarked, the only way to have good laws is to burn all existing laws and start afresh.

  • By Anonym

    The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

  • By Anonym

    The foundation of morality on the human sentiments of what is acceptable behavior versus repulsive behavior has always made morals susceptible to change. Much of what was repulsive 100 years ago is normal today, and - although it may be a slippery slope - what is repulsive today is possible to be normal 100 years into tomorrow; the human standard has always been but to push the envelope. In this way, all generations are linked, and one can only hope that every extremist, self-proclaimed progressive is considering this ultimate 'Utopia' to which his kindness will lead at the end of the chain.

  • By Anonym

    The individualist insists that drastic depressions are the result of credit inflation; (not excessive savings, as the Keynesians would have it) which at all times in history has been caused by direct government action or by government influence. As for aggravated unemployment, the individualist insists that it is exclusively the result of government intervention through inflation, wage rigidities, burdensome taxes, and restrictions on trade and production such as price controls and tariffs. The inflation that comes inevitably with government pump-priming soon catches up with the laborer, wipes away any real increase in his wages, discourages private investment, and sets off a new deflationary spiral which can in turn only be counteracted by more coercive and paternalistic government policies. And so it is that the "long run" is very soon a-coming, and the harmful effects of government intervention are far more durable than those that are sustained by encouraging the unhampered free market to work out its own destiny.

  • By Anonym

    The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.

  • By Anonym

    The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.

  • By Anonym

    The problem is politics is made a sport, almost as much a sport as football or baseball. When it comes to politics, adults and politicians do more finger-pointing and play more games than children ever do. Too often are we rooting for the pride of a team rather than the good of the nation.

  • By Anonym

    The reason all the 'intellectuals' – Sartre and Marx, Hemingway and Hellman – (. . .) are Leftists is that a defining characteristic of the 'intellectual' is the belief, stemming from inane notions of the perfectibility of man, that he can sit in a darkened room and purely by thinking, create a new heaven and a new earth, utopia, the eschaton immanentized. Rubbish, of course, but there you have it.

    • conservative quotes
  • By Anonym

    Stop telling me I’m oppressed.....I’m not a victim. I don’t know why feminists are so hellbent on characterizing me as one.....Feminists don’t speak for me. They’re not my voice. They’re not my representation. I owe them nothing, except maybe a shred of sympathy. How miserable must they be to see oppression at every turn?...You DON’T speak for me. You DON’T represent me or my concerns....We’re living proof that the modern day feminist movement is a crock. Feminists are victims of their own delusions, and we’ll never buy what they’re selling.

  • By Anonym

    The data on the economic utility of artists is really, really strong. Artists and entrepreneurs are the same people...and of course entrepreneurs are the people who provide all of the vision for the entire capitalist system. They're absolutely necessary. But conservatives tend to be so blind to art that they can't even see that the artists are the ones who drive the economy forward!

  • By Anonym

    The desire to avoid short-term hardships leads to major dislocations in [housing] markets.

  • By Anonym

    The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, 'All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.

  • By Anonym

    The left wants, needs, loves, and exacerbates violent conflict. The question is…why?...Conservatives generally want policy discussions because we disagree with liberals. Liberals need gutter politics because they despise conservatives personally.

  • By Anonym

    The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness... & ... Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative. –

  • By Anonym

    ...the most important thing you must remember when dealing with a politically biased professor is to be friendly.

  • By Anonym

    There are times when it is conservative to be a revolutionary, when the world must be turned on its head in order to be stood on its feet.

  • By Anonym

    There's nothing good about diversity, other than the food, and we don't need 128 million Mexicans for the restaurants.

  • By Anonym

    The same people who wear shirts that read “fuck your feelings” and rail against “political correctness” seem to believe that there should be no social consequences for [voting for Trump]. I keep hearing calls for empathy and healing, civility and polite discourse. As if supporting a man who would fill his administration with white nationalists and misogynists is something to simply agree to disagree on. Absolutely not. You don’t get to vote for a person who brags about sexual assault and expect that the women in your life will just shrug their shoulders. You don’t get to play the victim when people unfriend you on Facebook, as if being disliked for supporting a bigot is somehow worse than the suffering that marginalized people will endure under Trump. And you certainly do not get to enjoy a performance by people of color and those in the LGBT community without remark or protest when you enact policies and stoke hatred that put those very people’s lives in danger. Being socially ostracized for supporting Trump is not an infringement of your rights, it’s a reasonable response by those of us who are disgusted, anxious, and afraid. I was recently accused by a writer of “vote shaming” – but there’s nothing wrong with being made to feel ashamed for doing something shameful.

  • By Anonym

    The U.S. didn't achieve its liberty or prosperity by mistake. It was by design, and the architects were the Founding Fathers. Don't mess with the Constitution. The Constitution matters.

  • By Anonym

    The word evangelical is thrown around quite loosely these days in the media. It has become synonymous with being a Republican or a conservative. It may come as a shock to some, but every Republican is not a Christian and every Christian is not a conservative.

  • By Anonym

    Under this linguistic strategy, the New Right relabeled its resistance to women's newly acquired reproductive rights as "pro-life"; its opposition to women's newly embraced sexual freedom became "pro-chastity"; and its hostility to women's mass entry into the work force became "pro-motherhood." Finally, the New Right renamed itself- its regressive and negative stance against the progress of women's rights became "pro-family." . . . In the '20's, the Ku Klux Klan had built support with a similar rhetorical maneuver, downplaying their racism and recasting it as patriotism; they weren't lynching blacks, they were moral reformers defending the flag. p238

  • By Anonym

    We have successful, strong-willed, independent women who stand up for conservative, traditional values. Women are leading this movement because they've been raised to be unafraid....I didn't grow up feeling oppressed. I didn't grow up feeling like a victim.

  • By Anonym

    There is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term "liberal" in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives. It is true, of course, that in the struggle against the believers in the all-powerful state the true liberal must sometimes make common cause with the conservative, and in some circumstances, as in contemporary Britain, he has hardly any other way of actively working for his ideals. But true liberalism is still distinct from conservatism, and there is danger in the two being confused. 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. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of absolute government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others

  • By Anonym

    The sense that just about anything goes with the collection of public revenues and the making of public expenditure has contributed mightily to the current malaise.

  • By Anonym

    The vision of the Progressive has often been but to walk forward while facing backward; the business of the Reactionary, but that of walking backward while facing forward; henceforth the fallout is oftentimes, and obviously enough, but the formulation and the construction of obstacles in life and hurdles on-site, as long as there are cliffs on edge.

  • By Anonym

    They are trying to hold on to a world that no longer exists. They are blind and terrified because they feel it slipping away from them. They are gripping thin air but they keep trying desperately to hold on to it - hoping the air will turn into something familiar and solid.

  • By Anonym

    The young are often savvy in the cultural world but not so much the intellectual; the old the intellectual but not so much the cultural. But I tell you those who do the most damage during an era are very much aware of both.

  • By Anonym

    This is not hyperbole. It is possible for the average professor to have been taught by leftists, grown up in a left-leaning city, read only left-leaning books, entertained by leftists in pop culture and became a professor without holding a job outside academia. How can we expect these professors to adequately explain what people who oppose them believe?

  • By Anonym

    We see ourselves as nonconformist, but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age. "Look!" we're saying. "WE'RE normal! THIS is the average!" We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside it.

  • By Anonym

    ...We are reviled, much like black conservatives and any other minority group that says ‘no’ to the Left’s victimhood politics....It’s amazing that being a homosexual who believes in small government and personal accountability can get you banned from a Manhattan Chinese restaurant.

  • By Anonym

    We will never have the elite smart people on our side.

  • By Anonym

    We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.

  • By Anonym

    YOU ARE JUST You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be conscious human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

  • By Anonym

    What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy?

  • By Anonym

    About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.

  • By Anonym

    A black conservative is a black who dissents from the victimization explanation of black fate.

  • By Anonym

    When you’re a conservative Republican, you never think people are making money by ripping other people off,” he said. His mind was now fully open to the possibility. “I now realized there was an entire industry, called consumer finance, that basically existed to rip people off.

  • By Anonym

    Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too.

  • By Anonym

    A compassionate conservative is someone who electrocutes juveniles but lets them have a last 'make a wish'.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative, a liberal, and a moderate walk into a bar. The bartender says, 'Hi, Mitt.'

  • By Anonym

    A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather.

  • By Anonym

    ...a Conservative backbencher called Margaret Thatcher managed, despite front bench opposition, to get enacted her Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960, which was aimed at opening up council meetings to both press and public.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.

  • By Anonym

    A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.