Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

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

Conservatives hold on to things not only because they are attached to them, but also because they do not see the sense in radical change, until someone has told them what it will lead to.

I'm not sure I want to preserve the old ways just for the sake of saying, 'I don't believe in change.'

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.

Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs that we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed.

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

A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now!

The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.

We [Republicans] don’t need any new ideas.

Senior military officers will not accept defense reform unless it is forced upon them.

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

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

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.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

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

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

We are pushed forward by the social forces, reluctant and stumbling, our faces over our shoulders, clutching at every relic of the past as we are forced along; still adoring whatever is behind us. We insist upon worshipping 'the God of our fathers.' Why not the God of our children? Does eternity only stretch one way?

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

I think that all human systems require continuous renewal. They rigidify. They get stuff in the joints. They forget what they cared about. The forces against it are nostalgia and the enormous appeal of having things the way they always have been, appeals to a supposedly happy past. But we've got to move on.

Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn't mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.

I think the misconceptions, there are certain people that are fixed in those with those beliefs, and been in those for twenty-five years, you're not going to change them.... What you've got to do is basically talk to the future about what you want to with the country.

What if I told you that 10 years from now, your life would be exactly the same? I doubt you would be happy. So, why are you so afraid of change?

Even when men approve of the same arrangements, it must be asked whether they approve of them because they exist or because they are desirable in themselves. The common resistance to the collectivist tide should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the belief in integral freedom is based on an essentially forward-looking attitude and not on any nostalgic longing for the past or a romantic admiration for what has been.

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates.