Mike Rosen Quotes

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

Conservatism defends those coercive arrangements which a still-lingering savageness makes requisite. Radicalism endeavours to realize a state more in harmony with the character of the ideal man.

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.

People think that human beings have gotten worse, that because of the pressures that modern society puts on us, we've gotten worse, and we've gotten capable of doing more terrible things. I don't know if I necessarily think that that's true.

Conservatism solves problems. Libralism blows 'em up.

It is not to be expected that human nature will change in a day.

It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal.

Nobody's perfect, and to try to pretend you're perfect is an exhausting fool's errand.

Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

I have always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was man could be improved, but I'm not sure he can be. He can be trained; he can be disciplined.

I don't think you'll ever have a perfect world because we humans are prone to error, and so we're always in search of an upgrade.

A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less.

Not everybody is perfect, and I don't think we should be looking for perfect people.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

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.

There is a constant trend in human affairs toward the perfectibility of mankind. This was plainly stated at the time of tile French Revolution and has been reasserted ever since that time, and with increasing plausibility.

Ultra-liberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, and a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

Man is never perfect, nor contented.

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement.

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

Liberal Republicanism has kept this party abreast of human need in a changing world.

No human being should be a role model. We all have flaws.

Almost everything I think we've accomplished for the good of the country has been because of liberals against conservative opposition.