Quotes About Conservatism

Most of us don't think forwarding a racist joke or speaking in an insulting 'comedic' accent is appropriate at the workplace. Unfortunately, for those raised in the toxic culture of conservatism, the sort of mentality that leads government employees to do those things is widespread.

If there's one epithet the Right never tires of, it's 'elitism.'

Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism.

The way that one feels about the story line of 'Deterrence' can tell us, I believe, about each person's conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.

Here lies one of the world's rare generalized TINAs. There Is No Alternative to creativity and innovation: these days, obscurantism and conservatism will do for you every time.

In my right-wing politics of the time, I held that unemployment was usually the fault of the unemployed.

I tell people all the time that I was born and raised in Ronald Reagan's America.

Look, I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.

The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it

Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.

The conservatives who say, Let us not move so fast, and the extremists who say, Let us go out and whip the world , would tell you that they are as far apart as the poles. But there is a striking parallel: They accomplish nothing; for they do not reach the people who have a crying need to be free.

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

American political thought was not committed to conservatism, nor radicalism, nor moderation. It was above all fluid. As such it contained trends rather than hard lines, and affirmative leadership could guide it into constructive channels.

American conservatism, unlike traditional European conservatism, is liberty-loving because we are defending the revolutionary ideals of classical liberalism. ... Conservatism is about more than classical liberalism, but a conservatism that doesn't conserve classical liberalism isn't worth conserving.

At the very core of conservatism lies comfort with contradiction, acceptance of the fact that life is not fair; that ideals must forever be goals, not destinations; that the perfect is not the enemy of the good but one standard by which we understand what is good in the first place—though not the only standard.

Trump argues for his own brand of strong-government conservatism grounded not in, say, Bush's faith in God, but in Donald Trump's faith in himself. He has never shown more than the briefest nod to traditional conservative concerns about limited government, personal liberty or the Constitution. ... If Trump is successful, liberty-oriented conservatism will be replaced by so-called common sense statism.

Eric Helzer and David Pizarro asked students at Cornell University to fill out surveys about their political attitudes while standing near (or far from) a hand sanitizer dispenser. Those told to stand near the sanitizer became temporarily more conservative.27

Liberals sometimes say that religious conservatives are sexual prudes for whom anything other than missionary-position intercourse within marriage is a sin. But conservatives can just as well make fun of liberal struggles to choose a balanced breakfast—balanced among moral concerns about free-range eggs, fair-trade coffee, naturalness, and a variety of toxins, some of which (such as genetically modified corn and soybeans) pose a greater threat spiritually than biologically.

Liberalism seemed so obviously ethical. Liberals marched for peace, workers' rights, civil rights, and secularism. The Republican Party was (as we saw it) the party of war, big business, racism, and evangelical Christianity. I could not understand how any thinking person would voluntarily embrace the party of evil, and so I and my fellow liberals looked for psychological explanations of conservatism, but not liberalism.

In one of the most bizarre demonstrations of this effect, Eric Helzer and David Pizarro asked students at Cornell University to fill out surveys about their political attitudes while standing near (or far from) a hand sanitizer dispenser. Those told to stand near the sanitizer became temporarily more conservative.27

Muller began by distinguishing conservatism from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the view that there exists a "transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society.

Conservatives, in contrast, are more parochial—concerned about their groups, rather than all of humanity.

Muller asserted that modern conservatism is really about creating the best possible society, the one that brings about the greatest happiness given local circumstances.

Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as "openness to experience"), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.