A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
Alfred E. Wiggam
A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy1.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Speech in the House of Commons, Mar2. 3, 1845
I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical3 to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry4 the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832
The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.
Frank A. Vanderlip, From Farm Boy to Financier, chapter 25, 1935
A conservative is a man with two perfectly5 good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), radio address, Oct. 26, 1939
The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices6 and takes thought against the day of reckoning.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Speech in Syracuse, NY Sep. 29, 1936
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975)
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Notebook, 1935
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)
Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious7. They are conservatives after dinner.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), New England Reformers, 1844
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.
Robert Anton Wilson
I never dared to be radical when young
For fear it would make me conservative when old.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), 'Ten Mills,' A Further Range, 1936
A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)
