Herbert Croly Quotes

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.

I think by now I have made it fairly clear that I am not very happy with the word hope. I don't believe in people just hoping.

Condemnatory conservatism isn't anything I'm interested in.

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally.

A hopeful disposition is not the sole qualification to be a prophet.

A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic.

I used to be a conservative.

I am no prophet-and here's no great matter.

Conservatism is not a political ideology, it is a severe form of brain damage for which there's hardly any cure.

Always predict the worst, and you'll be hailed as a prophet.

My stepdad always said, "If you're going to believe the good, you're going to believe the bad." I think that's really important.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

It wasn't too difficult to see that [Ian] Paisley would never do anything positive.

Optimism is the first symptom that any disease is fatal.

I admire [Samuel] Beckett, but I am totally against him. He seeks no improvement.

Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers.

There is always a part of my mind that is preparing for the worst, and another part of my mind that believes if I prepare enough for it, the worst won’t happen.

I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.

Pessimism like calumny is easy to do, and attracts immediate attention. The gossiper and the writer may find this out soon enough, and a little encouragement from the current mood will procure them successes that bring endless imitators in their trail. On the other hand saying good things about life in general and individuals in particular and making it interesting is a serious task which few can achieve with credit.

Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience". "What's pessimism?" I said. "Religion without God.

Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism.

He said, first let's just unzip your religion down.

Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?

Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.