Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Those interested in perpetuating present conditions are always in tears about the marvelous past that is about to disappear.

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

Conservatism is the politics of reality.

The philosophical conservative is someone willing to pay the price of other people's suffering for his principles.

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

Conservatives want to keep things as they are, while revolutionists turn things upside down.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

The Republican Party is either going to return to the party of fiscal responsibility and consistent conservative principles as it was under Ronald Reagan, or it will continue down the path of 'sporadic moderation.'

I believe that when things are easy, people stay dormant.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

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?

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.

The conservatives say they are protecting the values of society. They are protecting their privileges.

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

Conservatism, I believe, is mainly due to want of imagination.

I'm for making the Republican Party conservative or making it die.

It is very difficult to be a Tory intellectual.

The castle which conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad.

[Describing the Republican Party:] ... the party of memory

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

Many Americans don't like the simple things. That's what they have against conservatives.