Conservative Thought Quotes

The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages. You can disagree with them, or with Coolidge or Reagan or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or George Will, but to dismiss them as nothing more than mouthpieces of the wealthy and big business is to indulge in [a] sort of anti-intellectualism…

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?

Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.

I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I've heard a lot of arguments, and I'm convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that's a better way to run a society.

Fascism allegation [to Donald Trump] is not coming from the left. This is coming from the right. It's coming from inside the Republican Party and from within mainstream conservative thought.

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason. And the parrots of talk radio are just sending out the same stuff. When I look at my e-mails, I see the same Limbaugh rhetoric; apparently, people don't have any ideas of their own. And there's just this drumroll of anti-progressive thought.

And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939.

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

A liberal is only a bundle of prejudices until he has mastered, has understood, experienced the philosophy of Conservatism.

You know, conservatism is not a bad thing. It's not a pejorative.

I'm not a moderniser. I accept that things like escalators do need an upgrade every now and then, but I think the fundamental principles of Conservatism have a long thread running through them that does not need to be modernised.

The black conservative is responsible for making people question an idea that racism must be extinct before black people can overcome. Understanding that our goal is to thrive despite racism rather than fetishizing it is, in fact, the central ideological plank of people deemed "black conservatives." This is a coherent position, but that can be hard to perceive, given the way that race has been discussed in our land over the past 40 years or so.

This difference between the two parties covers a wide range, and is indicative of the conservative thought of the one and the progressive thought of the other.

There is no inherent contradiction between being right-wing and being intelligent.

When people begin to talk about "our island story" my hackles rise. It is deluded and conservative.

'National Review' came along, in '55, at the moment when American conservatism most needed it.

The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress…

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, and other conservative giants are the voices of the conservative movement's conscience. Every day, millions and millions of Americans - myself included - turn on their radios and televisions to listen to what they have to say, and we are inspired by their words and by their determination.

It is hard to oppose an ideology with a tradition.

The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea.

I like George Will, I don't agree with him particularly, but he's probably the smartest conservative out there.

What Barack Obama calls bipartisanship is not moving to the right, but finding where people who consider themselves conservatives share these fundamental American values. When he talks about union, that's the kind of thing he means. That requires common responsibility. Individual responsibility is one of the hallmarks of conservative thought. In conservative religion, you yourself are responsible for whether you get into heaven. Or with fiscal conservatives, you are the market. It's your individual discipline and market discipline.

What worries me is that conservative thought is moving quickly, but we're kind of the pachyderms in Congress because things move so slowly.

What brought Conservatism into existence was the French Revolution.

What I intend to do is uphold a standard of intellectual seriousness on the right. [These books] should be written in a way that they are serious, soberly argued, well researched, and make a respectable case-agree or disagree.