Henry Ward Beecher Quotes

My father was a great innovator in public life, but when it came to raising his daughters, no one could have been more conservative.

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting.

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell has already rung.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

Incidentally, one of the most worrying problems in the impact of Western modernity on traditional culture is that it quite rapidly communicates its own indifference or anxiety or even hostility about age and ageing.

Every generation challenges the one that goes before.

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear.

I don’t believe in democracy because I don’t believe that any group at any time can change the course and goals of their ancestors…

Man is by nature a conservative animal and government is his instrument for preventing rapid change.

A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon out of respect for that ancient institution, the old one.

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

Conservatives want to keep things as they are, while revolutionists turn things upside down.

Conservatives hold on to things not only because they are attached to them, but also because they do not see the sense in radical change, until someone has told them what it will lead to.

Opposition to social change is but one pillar of contemporary Republicanism.

Evangelicals have, for decades, believed that the country was more conservative than not, more Christian than not. The bipartisanship on religious liberty and the civic faith of the country was conducive to that. Now they've woken up to a reality in the Obama years that this was a polite fiction.

Conservative is the new counter culture, and I consider myself to be a member of the counter culture.

The youth doesn't know what they want while the older generation remains stuck in the past. But the basic concept of entertainment remains the same - demand and supply - and that won't change.

I do sort of question the notion that conservatives should try and turn America into a place where people can come from traditional societies and continue to be fully traditional in every sense.

Again and again, people get more conservative as they get older.

I'm like, 'Wow, I guess a lot of people didn't have this type of upbringing'... that old world technique of, you know, nothing's given to you, you've gotta work for everything you've done... It's just different from what I'm seeing today.

One of my goals in life is to watch political correctness shrivel up and die (as it should be for any true conservative).

My generation of women was the last for whom marriage and a family were the goal.

Classically, it's the child who looks up at their parents who says, 'This is how the future is going to be,' and it's the parents who don't understand because they're set in their ways. For me, it was the exact opposite.

I realize that there's a whole generation of kids out there like me who are totally disregarding the moral values taught to us by our parents.