Herbert Spencer Quotes

Conservatives believe that human nature is what makes us imperfectible. Liberals believe that human nature can be changed and perfected.

Liberalism isn't change. It has to be imposed.

The worst enemy of the new radicals are the old liberals.

What I have been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism.

I came up in a time where the assumption was, in the '60s and '70s, where the federal government was a great agent of progressive social change, it was the intervener in the best sense, and it would come and address injustice forthrightly.

I'm conservative on some issues. I'm progressive on most.

I've always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position.

Conservatives believe government's principal functions are the preservation of freedom and removal of restraints on the individual. Liberalism's ascent in the first two-thirds of this century reflected the new belief that government should also confer capacities on individuals. Liberalism's decline in the final third of this century has reflected doubts about whether government can be good at that, or whether government that is good at that is good for the nation's character.

Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism.

Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.

The meaning of conservatism is not that it impedes movement forward and upward, but that it impedes movement backwards and downwards—to chaotic darkness and the return to a primitive state.

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.

The great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. It's really precious, and it's really easy to lose.

Strong women, when respected, make the whole society stronger. One must be careful with such rapid changes, though, and make an effort to preserve, at the same time, the positive traditions of Indian culture.

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.

Now, there's a desire for order, authority coming from a feeling that society has gone too far to the side of individualism and liberalism.

Progressive politics is not something to be bolted on to another cause.

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?

The left has come to regard common sense - the traditional wisdom and folkways of the community - as an obstacle to progress and enlightenment.

We have to struggle against the conservatives from all sides, not only the right-wingers, but also the left-wing conservatives who don't want to change anything.

It is said that a neo-conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.

I believe in all the qualities of being a liberal. I keep going back to all the great social events in our country's history, starting with the Salem witch trials, where the conservative view was that they're witches and should be burned at the stake, and the liberal view was there's no such thing as witches.

Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

All political action aims at either preservation or change.