“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.”
G. K. Chesterton
“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals”
Mark Twain
“I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer, just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals . . . The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom, and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
Ronald Reagan
“What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried”
Abraham Lincoln
“A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth”
Jacques Barzun
“Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. The Conservative”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. The Conservative”
