John R. Hibbing Quotes

All political action aims at either preservation or change.

America is a conservative country with a small “c” - they want change, but they don’t want too much change too fast.

How did the progressive Republican Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower become the reactionary party of Ronald Reagan, the tea party and Paul Ryan? There is nothing random about these ideological shifts. They reflect the party’s — and the nation’s — central unresolved problem: the tension between equality of opportunity and protection of private property.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

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

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative

What makes Progressives is their confidence in Progress.

Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it.

This difference between the two parties covers a wide range, and is indicative of the conservative thought of the one and the progressive thought of the other.

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

Conservatives often say that we should care not about equality of outcomes but about equality of opportunity.

I really do think the things that make our society what it is are under threat. It should be about everyone having the potential to be what they're going to be.

Piety and virtue lie in obedience and conformity, while nothing is more repugnant than change and innovation.

Liberal institutions soon cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established.

It's very easy for liberals and conservatives to agree upon liberty, but it is harder for them to agree upon equality.

The notion that all human beings born into this world enter at birth into a definite social and economic classification, in which classification they must remain permanently through life, is wholly false and fatal to a progressive civilization.

I am a conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a radical to remove all that is bad.

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

A party of order and stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

A Supreme Court justice is sometimes a liberal on one issue and a conservative on another.