Alan Bennett Quotes

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.

There are certain moments when we might wish the future were built by men of the past.

I'm a traditionalist. I have certain values I live by.

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

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.

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

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

But you say you are conservative - eminently conservative - while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried?

Consumption of wine has been made legal; mixing of sexes in the schools … has led to the proliferation of bastards. Depravity has spread and we see that women no longer cover themselves but display their bodies with makeup for all to see both indoors and outdoors. Where is the dignity of the Algerian man after his honor has been publicly flouted?

I think a lot of things have become associated with the Right. For example, an unapologetic commitment to progress and modernity is now almost always associated with neo-conservatism whereas it traditionally used to be associated with left-wing thinking and moving society forward.

The last thing a man becomes progressive about is the activities of his own wife.

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.

In my village, people believed that women should stay in their homes. However, I followed my heart and showed them that I'll not succumb to their regressive ideals.

I think our culture is moving forward - slowly. And also, as we move forward, we're witnessing some of the old stalwarts rejecting that forward motion.

Are we solving the world's problems by allowing women to make the first move on a dating app? No. But I do believe we are helping to change some very archaic norms.

I believe history and tradition is something solid and something we can rest on. I am not crazy about putting new spices in chocolate.

The exclusion of girls from education is an issue of justice. But it's also an issue of economics because it's holding families, communities, and nations back. The chiefs are often a bridge between the traditional and the modern world and are very powerful implements to change.

I have the old-school mentality.

I've made no pretence to be a modern man at all, ever.

The conservative may clamor against reform, but he might as well clamor against the centrifugal force. He sighs for the "good old times,"--he might as well wish the oak back into the acorn.

People are drawn to radical Islam because they feel their traditional ways of life threatened by the influx of KFC and Hollywood movies and the like.

I have seen a lot of men, for example, who will make a will and include their daughters whether they are married or not. And perhaps the greatest change of attitude is that today, at least in Kenya, if you don't send your child to school - unless it's a matter of poverty or religion, and it is not that there no schools - then people wonder, "why the hell don't you send your children to school?" Now that's a very big jump from when I was going to school and educating girls was an exception to the rule.

Change is not what we expect from religious people. They tend to love the past more than the present or the future.

He who today utters a bold truth that seems to shock some old institution with the premonition of destruction, and that scares men from their propriety, will a hundred years hence be regarded as a remarkably conservative man. And yet the people who stand peculiarly upon what they call the foundations of conservatism, and hold to hard, practical facts, now stand upon that which one hundred years ago was rank heresy.

...I had grown up in a world that was dominated by immature age. Not by vigorous immaturity, but by immaturity that was old and tired and prudent, that loved ritual and rubric, and was utterly wanting in curiosity about the new and the strange. Its era has passed away, and the world it made has crumbled around us. Its finest creation, a code of manners, has been ridiculed and discarded.