Aneurin Bevan Quotes

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

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.

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

By definition, conservatives struggle with change.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

That man's the true Conservative who lops the moldered branch away.

I mean the future has become old fashioned.

What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

Conservatives conserve and that is why they became irrelevant.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

We are a party of innovation. We do not reject our traditions, but we are willing to adapt to changing circumstances, when change we must. We are willing to suffer the discomfort of change in order to achieve a better future.

Those who cling to the past won't give up without a fight.

One who uses an ancient rule to govern the present does not necessarily see the changes that have taken place.

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.

It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.

The defense of morals is the battle-cry which best rallies stupidity against change.

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

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present.

I am of tradition, but that doesn't mean I have an old outlook on life.

We need the rock of the past under our feet in order to spring forward into the future.

I'm all for prosperity. It's change I object to.

It's important to have a non-nostalgic view and say, let's look forward, because if we don't, all we'll hear are voices telling us to go back.

Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past.