Conservative Quotes & Sayings

In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. The great, vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure, doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. — United States House Judiciary Committee Of Congress 1854

I'm an honest, hardworking conservative leader who will stand up to Washington and fight for Nebraska. — Deb Fischer

But, you know, I'm presiding over an institution that was designed not to work. — John Boehner

A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance. — David Mamet

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. — Elbert Hubbard

As one of the most conservative members of Congress and a staunch supporter of the 2nd Amendment, I am constantly under attack for my values and beliefs. — Paul Broun

A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung. — Henry Ward Beecher

I appear wild on the outside, but I'm a conservative businessman. — Donny Deutsch

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance. — Jane Smiley

To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped. — Russell Kirk

The view that we know less than we thought we knew about how to change the human condition came, in time, to be called neoconservatism. Many ... , myself included, disliked the term because we did not think we were conservative, neo or paleo. (I voted for John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and worked in the latter's presidential campaign.) It would have been better if we had been called policy skeptics; that is, people who thought it was hard, though not impossible, to make useful and important changes in public policy. — James Q. Wilson

I brag on the Democratic Party. We're libertarian on social issues, it's live and let live. Fiscally, we're conservative and responsible, and were environmentally conscious. — Mark Udall

After a few Republicans on the Houston city council supported the Democratic majority's proposal that stalled cars be towed immediately off the city's notoriously clotted freeways, local Republican officials promised retribution. 'We're not looking for council members who are going to go along and get along,' said Jared Woodfill, chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. 'We're looking for council members who are going to stand up for conservative values.' Surely, political ideology has teetered over some high cliff when towing can be described as a 'value.' What's next, a doctrine of potholes, the water pressure credo? — Bill Bishop

The Delta is a conservative place, .. District 28 is a very conservative district. We don't have many conservative districts in the Delta. Mississippi is a conservative place. We need to keep it that way. — Charles Capps

The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights. — Mark R. Levin

Cave divers, of course, deal with an elevated level of risk, and the most that I can say here is that we tend to conduct our work at the bottom of a deep cave on an extremely conservative basis with heavy levels of backup equipment and a policy to abort if any single person doesn't like the situation underwater at any time during the mission. — William Stone

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions. — Samuel Butler

I want to lead the Progressive Conservative Party, a party that will promote true conservative values and principles. I can tell you right now, I am not the merger candidate. I am not interested in institutional marriages with other parties. — Peter MacKay

For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education. That's why, despite being soemthing of a liberatarian, he repeatedly proposed that the state pay for universal primary education as well as fund education at later stages. He was met with opposition from many quarters, mostly those wary of big government or highter taxes. Yet interestingly, one of this most ardent supporters was an old friend and political opponent, the conservative John Adams. "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it," Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people. — Fareed Zakaria

It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant ... — Andre Vltchek

It is necessary to have a very liberal and simultaneously very conservative mentality to practice Tantric Zen. — Frederick Lenz

My mother used to say: 'It's not enough to be Hungarian. You still need a little talent, too.' To paraphrase her, its not enough to be conservative, you still need to have the brainpower to be a Supreme Court justice. And, if Harriet Miers is confirmed, she likely won't be in the same league with her colleagues in terms of gray matter. — Dick Morris

Myself, I'm a post-ideological conservative. — Christopher Buckley

Some economists became obsessed with market efficiency and others with market failure. Generally held to be members of opposite schools-freshwater and saltwater, Chicago and Cambridge, liberal and conservative, Austrian and Keynesian-both sides share an essential economic vision. They see their discipline as successful insofar as it eliminates surprise-insofar, that is, as the inexorable workings of the machine override the initiatives of the human actors. — George Gilder

Afghanistan is a rural nation, where 85 percent of people live in the countryside. And out there it's very, very conservative, very tribal - almost medieval. — Khaled Hosseini

Are public school textbooks biased? Are they censored? The answer to both is yes. And the nature of the bias is clear: Religion, traditional family values, and conservative political and economic positions have been reliably excluded from children's textbooks. — Paul Vitz

The tourist was the great conservative who hated novelty and adored dirt. — Henry Adams

She was old and crankily conservative in the way only old liberals could be. — John Scalzi

Instinct is like Nature herself - prodigiously conservative, and yet transcending her own historical conditions in her acts of creation. — Carl Jung

A telling example of what it has all come to can be found in the person of Rick Santorum, the junior Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Elected to the House in 1990 and then the Senate in 1994, Santorum, forty, is the apotheosis of the brash newer member who imposes himself on the working order of the Senate, demonstrates little respect for the institution, becomes a one-man ideological enforcer, and brings down the level of civility. Toothy, with a shock of dark hair, Santorum looks the perfect pol for the television age. Unburdened by brilliance, he makes his impact through pestiferousness. — Elizabeth Drew

President George Herbert Walker Bush ran as a strong conservative, ran to continue the third term of Ronald Reagan, continue the Ronald Reagan revolution. Then he raised taxes and in '92 ran as an establishment moderate - same candidate, two very different campaigns. — Ted Cruz

The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living. — Roger Scruton

Herman Cain is probably well-liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican Party, conservative movement and tea party movement. People like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert and so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so he can say, 'Look: This is not a racist anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look: We have a black man.' And look he's polling well and he won a straw poll. — Janeane Garofalo

Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, 'Just wait.' — Gloria Steinem

The media is socially liberal, economically conservative, and always pro-war. — James Rozoff

Conservatives have long advanced the idea that our military can - and should - be used to shape foreign policy; our strength is the size and capacity of our military. They have advanced a retributive crime policy - punish the wrongdoers, no need to look at systemic causes of crime. The "war on terror" activates these deep frames, and politicians, the media, and the public continue to use the phrase because the conservative deep frames have become so pervasive. If — George Lakoff

It's almost impossible to make the case that Bush is a conservative. That may be good; that may be bad. — Tucker Carlson

My personal credo as a libertarian conservative: I think all attempts to reform your fellow-citizens or tell them how to live their lives are arrogant and tyrannical. THAT'S why I oppose Leftism. I want people to be free to manage their own lives. Reform is just authoritarianism. People are not playthings for anybody's theories or obsessions. — John Ray

That the city would return to being the thriving white suburb of his youth. Cars with tail fins. Straw hats and sock hops. Episcopalians and ice cream socials. It would be the opposite of white flight, he said. "The Ku Klux influx." But when I'd ask him how, he'd just shrug and, like a conservative senator without any ideas, filibuster me with unrelated stories about the good ol' days. — Paul Beatty

I trust that whoever leads the Conservative Party actually pays regard to my advice on how we should conduct ourselves and I personally will obviously support whoever eventually wins. — Kenneth Clarke

Thanks to demographics, that conservative push is not going to work-the United States is not going to be a mostly white country again- and because genies don't go back into bottles and queer people are not going back into the closet and women aren't going to surrender. It's a war, but I don't believe we're losing it, even if we won't win it anytime soon either; rather, some battles are won, some are engaged, and some women are doing really well while others suffer. And things continue to change in interesting and sometimes even auspicious ways. — Rebecca Solnit

Whether conservative or liberal, fundamentalist or agnostic, the more students learn of biology, the more they accept evolution. — Kenneth R. Miller

In actual fact, I have always been a conservative cross, borne sadly by liberal friends. — Gore Vidal

I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest. — Donald Miller

The publisher has told - you know, if these editors, Andres Martinez and Nick Goldberg, were the least bit honest about this, they would tell you the publisher has told them he wants the editorial page to be conservative. — Robert Scheer

Keep your opinions to yourself. I think it's important that I stay neutral on politics and remain hard to understand. I don't want to be pigeonholed as conservative, liberal, independent or anything. I back the man for the things the man believes in, not whether it says "R" or "D" down there beside his name. — Merle Haggard

I try to tell people to do, or advise them, anyway, is adopt conservative philosophies like hard work, preparation, perseverance, love of God, love of country, personal responsibility. Start to think for yourself and then go out and vote. And I think that once they start to do that, they will know where their vote should go. — David A. Clarke, Jr

He'd never considered sweet and conservative to be so hot, but damn, Emma wore it well. — Jami Davenport

The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face. — Jeremy Hardy

To all conservative women out there: If you are so sure the embryo needed for stem cell research are precious human life that can't be destroyed, then implant one in your uterus and bring it to term. That's right, put your cervix where your mouth is. — Bill Maher

It is unfortunate that some in our party have lost sight of the importance of conservation and environmental protection for keeping America strong, healthy, prosperous, and secure. It's time for all of our Republican leaders to recognize that conservation is conservative. — David Jenkins

I don't think it's irrational or too conservative of me to think, I never want to carry my baby into the county jail ever again.
Is it? — Joanna Gaines

I'm actually quite conservative. — Peta Wilson

Republicans have been fleeced and exploited and lied to by a conservative entertainment complex. — David Frum

I am like all other atheists only in that I do not believe there are any gods. Beyond that, I may differ dramatically in my values and beliefs from any other atheist. On both sides of the political spectrum, one can find the neo-conservative Objectivists and the ultra-liberal Communists, both of whom hate each other. These two factions take up nearly opposite sets of values, yet both are comprised of unabashed atheists. — Richard Carrier

If you have an approach that makes money, then money management can make the difference between success and failure ... I try to be conservative in my risk management. I want to make sure I'll be around to play tomorrow. Risk control is essential. — Monroe Trout

I am proud to be a conservative ... but I am also proud throughout my life to have attracted the support and the love and affection of people from all over America and all parts of it. — John McCain

I don't just want my books to be about the '30s and '40s. I want them to read as if they had been written then. I think of them as '40s novels, written in the conservative narrative past. — Alan Furst

The Conservative Party isn't electing a leader in opposition after losing a general election who can build up over five years and gain experience. We're electing somebody who's going to be our prime minister in two months' time, and that's why it's very important we have somebody with strong experience, who's good at working with the international community and can hit the ground running. — Chris Grayling

I'm a total Republican, but I've never claimed to be a Christian-right conservative. They're a large but dwindling part of the Party. — Roger Stone

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno

Right-wing propagandists like Limbaugh and Coulter are essentially entertainers, entertainers who stimulate prejudice, selfishness and meanness the way a comedian works for laughs or a tragedian plays for tears. Theirs is a new art form, exclusive to America and bewilderingly successful. In place of traditional conservative ideology, they offer their audience partisan belligerence and a complete package of mail-order hatreds, designed for the conceptually and ethically impaired. — Hal Crowther

What I would like to vote for is a candidate that is socially liberal, a fiscal conservative, broadly libertarian with a small 'l' but sensible and pragmatic and with a chance of winning. That's more or less the empty set. — Tyler Cowen

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it
perhaps as much more as the roots are more vital than grafts. It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race. It is good that the old should resist the young, and that the young should prod the old; out of this tension, as out of the strife of the sexes and the classes, comes a creative tensile strength, a stimulated development, a secret and basic unity and movement of the whole. — Will Durant

Small-business customers are very conservative and very cheap. We don't have to explain ourselves for the most part. — Paul Graham

When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times — Ann Coulter

I'm apolitical. Where all that Conservative business came along from, I don't know. — Cilla Black

If you want to say something radical, you should dress conservative. — Steven Biko

The most passionately anti-Obama Republican politicians and activists consider themselves the truest and purest of conservatives, and often unleash their scorn and fury on others who also call themselves conservative but differ on strategy and tactics. — John Podhoretz

Conservative ideas are alive and dynamic, the result of a free and intellectually honest vision for the country. As long as conservatism is strong, the future of a strong America is assured. — Rush Limbaugh

There is nothing wrong with being a declared liberal or conservative and conducting a sympathetic interview with a political figure who shares your views. — Peggy Noonan

The conservative does not defend the Old Regime; he speaks on behalf of old regimes - in the family, the factory, the field. There, ordinary men, and sometimes women, get to play the part of little lords and ladies, supervising their underlings as if they all belong to a feudal estate . . . The task of this type of conservatism---democratic feudalism - -becomes clear: surround these old regimes with fences and gates, protect them from meddlesome intruders like the state or a social movement, while descanting on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future. — Corey Robin

The anything-goes passiveness of the religious and political Left is matched by the preachy moralism of the religious and political Right. The person who uncritically embraces any party line is guilty of an idolatrous surrender of her core identity as Abba's Child. Neither liberal fairy dust nor conservative hardball addresses our ragged human dignity. — Brennan Manning

Scratch the surface at conservative think tanks and universities that house free-market economists, and it's not hard to find proponents of a carbon tax. — Nina Easton

I think the world looks down on Republicans for their socially conservative views, which includes religion in government. — Gary Johnson

I'm humbled to follow in the footsteps of Ed Feulner, who built the most important conservative institution in the nation. He has been a friend and mentor for years and I am honored to carry on his legacy of fighting for freedom. — Jim DeMint

Senator Brown and I have different philosophies as represented in our different ratings: I am a conservative, and he is a liberal. — Rob Portman

The judgment of God against this nation will not be turned by a more conservative President, but by the repentance of its people. — Paul Washer

'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.' — Benjamin Disraeli

The conservative media movement exists primarily as a moneymaking venture. — Alex Pareene

Conservative or liberal, we are all constitutionalists. — Barack Obama

I just get really bored with sticking to the norm and having the proper conservative image. That's just so not me. — Christina Aguilera

I'm a very happy, content member of David Cameron's team. I fought very hard to get my friend elected as leader of the Conservative party, then elected as the prime minister of this country, and I'm very happy being part of that team that is bringing change to this country. — George Osborne

Youth is almost invariably liberal, age conservative. Adopt — Charlotte M. Brame

The Conservative sees in the free market the harmony of interests and rules of cooperation that also underlie the civil society. — Mark Levin

I don't believe we need a good conservative judge, and I don't believe we need a good liberal judge. I subscribe to the Justice Potter Stewart standard. He was a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. And he said the mark of a good judge, good justice, is that when you're reading their decision, their opinion, you can't tell if it's written by a man or woman, a liberal or a conservative, a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian. You just know you're reading a good judicial decision. — John F. Kerry

The endorsement of respected conservative Republican officeholders and politicians is particularly important at this time as to destroy Reagan's credibility as a loyal Republican. — Robert Teeter

I come to the table from a conservative or libertarian point of view, and I admit that. I'm a commentator. I'm not a journalist or anything else. — Glenn Beck

FDR's justices were allies while he was alive, but after he died, they developed four totally different theories of what the Constitution is, two of which are considered conservative and two of which are considered liberal. — Noah Feldman

One of the things that goes with getting older is that one becomes more conservative - and I emphasise that when I use the word conservative I do not mean politically. — Jeffrey Bernard

As more Americans meet Mitt Romney, I think they'll see beyond the handsome exterior and see not just a good salesman, but a thoughtful (and, yes, conservative) leader. — Kathryn Jean Lopez

The Left despises Texas, with its stellar record of job growth; Texas, with its strong support for traditional marriage and the sanctity of life; Texas, the root of the conservative tree. Should the Left succeed in its attempt to turn Texas purple, America could turn permanently blue. — Ben Shapiro

We will never have the elite smart people on our side. — Rick Santorum

If you refuse to acknowledge that there is any waste that can be culled from the military budget, you are a big-government conservative, and you cannot lay claim to balancing the budget. — Rand Paul

I am very conservative. I don't invest in anything that is risky. If someone comes to me with a project idea, I let them risk their money, not mine. — Claudia Schiffer

Would it not be better to go home and live at the family park all the year round, and hunt, and attend Quarter Sessions, and be able to declare morning and evening with a clear conscience that the country was going to the dogs? Such was the mental working of many a Conservative who supported Mr. Daubeny on this occasion. — Anthony Trollope

In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events. — Georg Simmel

In Washington I'm thought of as a conservative, but in Tennessee I'm thought of as a Bolshevik. — Howard Baker

When I released my first record, I was really in the middle of having made the decision to follow the clinical psychology path, which is competitive, rigorous, and fairly conservative. — Autre Ne Veut