Quotes & Sayings About Conservatives

Conservatives need to know how important it is to fill out the census. It is one of the only things our Constitution specifically asks of U.S. citizens and boycotting will just help liberals expand government even further. — Patrick McHenry

I grew up in a very difficult country, a very oppressive situation because of the Somoza dictatorship. My family was in opposition to Somoza; Somoza was a liberal, and my family were conservatives. These were the two traditional parties in Nicaragua. — Gioconda Belli

Libertarians (like anarchists and Marxists) generally believe that human nature is good, though damaged by certain social institutions. Conservatives, on the contrary, hold that "in Adam's fall we sinned all": human nature, though compounded of both good and evil, is irremediably flawed; so the perfection of society is impossible, all human beings being imperfect. — Russell Kirk

When the topic is growing income inequality, it's hard to prettify an imbalance between the rich and everybody else, so instead, conservatives try to argue that it doesn't exist. — Timothy Noah

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

You know, we have main English language parties, federalist parties, and traditionally the ones to watch would be the Conservatives, who form the government, and then the Liberals. — Rick Mercer

Bush reiterated his stand to conservatives opposing his decision on stem cell research. He said today he believes life begins at conception and ends at execution. — Jay Leno

He had an AM radio playing a conservative talk show. The host was making some very interesting statements about the president. I don't usually pay much attention to politics, but from what the man said, I had to believe that sometime in the recent past the laws regarding sedition must have changed. — Jeff Lindsay

If you hit minorities they're gonna blame conservatives, Second Amendment, guns, and the terrorists won't get their due credit. So from now on acts of terror, only hit white people, because hate crimes against them are permitted, and the media will play it up. — Rush Limbaugh

Cutting corners no doubt makes the job easier for the government, but making the government's job easier is rarely a priority. Preserving the Constitution, fighting off the nibblers and chippers, even nibblers and chippers with good intentions, was once regarded by conservatives as the first duty of the citizen. It still is. — Wesley Pruden

Most conservatives know better than to promote the state funding of art. The result of such funding is the mess that modern art has become. Atonal music is to music what subsidized art is to art ... The fact that cacophony has reigned almost supreme since 1900 is a testimony to Mises' original observation. Atonal music is to music what socialism is to economics: planned chaos. — Gary North

The effort of Reince Priebus and the RNC to reach out to movement conservatives has been impressive and will, I believe pay great dividends come election time — Ken Blackwell

Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again, their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that's eroding the freedoms of most people. — Robert Reich

While President Obama shirks his responsibility to advance solutions to our fiscal challenges, he can no longer hide from the merciless math of the balance sheet. Conservatives have made certain of that. — Paul Ryan

Conservatives value economic liberty and moral security, while the liberal values economic security and moral liberty. — Jonah Goldberg

Most of all, however, critics of black conservatives say we've forgotten where we came from. I may forget a federal budget number or, God forbid, to set the alarm clock for my weekly 6 a.m. flight to Washington, but I know exactly where I came from. — J. C. Watts

There are genuine questions to be asked about why we now have the highest level of employment in many decades, contrary to the position during the boom-bust years of the Conservatives. — Douglas Alexander

The conservative idea is not that government has no role. You might have argued that in the thirties when conservatives opposed the New Deal. — Charles Krauthammer

Progressives, in a way, are the new conservatives. We want to conserve what we fought to build. — Al Franken

Governing was always difficult for conservatives, but as they return to the opposition, they are rediscovering their skill at blame evasion. — Thomas Frank

Conservatives don't want to read good, smart books. They mostly want to read Fox and talk radio hosts writing about presidents. — Alex Pareene

In 1959, Vice-President Nixon, speaking to members of California's Commonwealth Club, was asked if he'd like to see the parties undergo an ideological realignment - the sort that has since taken place - and he replied, "I think it would be a great tragedy ... if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line." He continued, "I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided generally violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to the other. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been room for a broad spectrum of opinion." Therefore, "when your Administrations come to power, they will represent the whole people rather than just one segment of the people. — Jeffrey Frank

I raised another shot. That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance. — Rob Thurman

Trust him to have his bitter politics
Against his unacquaintances the rich
Who sleep in houses of their own, though mortgaged.
Conservatives, they don't know what to save. — Robert Frost

The mainline media attacks all conservatives, especially Christians, and distorts their policies and beliefs so that the local population is afraid to vote for them. — Tim LaHaye

[Among conservatives] there's been too much pseudo-populism, almost too much concern and attention for, quote, 'the people' ... After all, we conservatives are on the side of the lords and barons ... We ... are pulling up the drawbridge against the peasants. — William Kristol

And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of our time - whether we need to plan and manage our societies to reflect our goals and values, or whether that task can be left to the magic of the market. — Naomi Klein

It is my hope that all of the Republicans who recognize that nominating a candidate who agrees with Hillary Clinton on a host of issues, who has a very similar record, is not the path to victory. And if we come together, if conservatives stand together, we're going to have a great night on Tuesday. — Ted Cruz

Conservatives brayed that government should stay out of the private sector; liberals bleated for nationalizing the banks. — Steven Rattner

Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate. — Margaret Cho

People ask how I can be a conservative and still want higher taxes. It makes my head spin, and I guess it shows how old I am. But I thought that conservatives were supposed to like balanced budgets. I thought it was the conservative position to not leave heavy indebtedness to our grandchildren. — Ben Stein

Conservative talk radio works because there are lots of conservatives who are convinced that they are not getting the whole story from the regular media. — Paul Weyrich

The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories - with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe - but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread. — Ayn Rand

Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives. — Italo Calvino

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals' imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with. — Thomas Sowell

Conservatives, despite their increasingly powerful presence on cable TV and talk radio, feel excluded and disregarded by the longstanding preponderance of liberal voices on public television. — Michael Medved

With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans. — Dick Morris

Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn. They will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked. — George Carlin

A French Republican is a Republican who beats up on conservatives and is constantly praising the Democrats and contributing to the massive spending in this country while they go home and pretend otherwise. — Mark Levin

As it happens, Chicago is the nation's leader in municipal privatization efforts. That's right: The city that conservatives portray as the citadel of the power-grabbing, government-growing left has been selling itself off in pieces for years. It signed a 99-year lease for the Chicago Skyway, a toll road in the city's South Side, back in 2005. — Thomas Frank

Conservatives ... are so opposed to government regulations that they are skeptical of anyone who identifies a problem that requires regulatory solutions - and they are inherently accepting of those who downplay such problems. — Joseph J. Romm

Conservatives are winning offices, and champions of big government are cleaning out their desks right now. — Rick Perry

Conservatives and companies condoned Rush Limbaugh's 2006 attacks on Michael J. Fox for campaigning about stem cell research. — Christine Pelosi

This weekend the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, featured several speakers including Sarah Palin and Phil Robertson from 'Duck Dynasty.' It was a good weekend for conservatives - and a great weekend for wild animals. — Jimmy Fallon

[Facism] that incredibly loaded word we do not associate with the real American politics is being used by other conservatives, by other Republicans to talk about Donald Trump. — Rachel Maddow

Is not 'casual' labour the very secret and safety-valve of a safe and sound labour system generally?...In a complicated and commercial state constant employment at regular wages is impossible; while dole-supported unemployment, at anything like the wages of employment, is demoralizing to begin with and ruinous at its more or less quickly arriving end. — George Saintsbury

Conservatives truly love America and support the armed forces, while liberals are unpatriotic draft dodgers. — Joe Conason

Just because you can watch half-nude women on afternoon television or gay men kissing on the streets of nearly any major city does not mean America is free, as complacent liberals might think, much less too free, as conservatives often suggest. Just because most dissidents are left alone doesn't mean there is no police state, for that would be convenient indeed for the police statists: the idea that people ought not complain so long as they have the right to do so. — Anthony Gregory

The fallout from the Supreme Court halfway killing Obamacare would likely be more serious than conservatives believe ... Even their own base, which has been told relentlessly that Obamacare represents the end of the America they love, might start to demand a fix once it becomes clear just what they're missing-& what all those blue states with their own exchanges are getting. — Kevin Drum

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they're wrong. It's just the opposite. — Robert Reich

The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If we conservatives "of color" refuse to promote the welfare state, unfettered abortion, affirmative action, and massive immigration, we are guilty of "selling out. — Michelle Malkin

Conservatives insist that government should be " run more like a business." One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation. — Michael Parenti

The privatization of education means that conservatives can set up their own schools in which their children will not have to learn about anything that might be inconsistent with conservative morality and politics. It would also mean a move away from the integration of schools, which means that the children of conservatives would not have to encounter students from different subcultures with different values. School vouchers would make privatization that much easier. In — George Lakoff

As conservatives, we know our principles, and we also know the best ideas do not always come from Washington. — Kevin McCarthy

Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. "If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality," argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.42 — Michelle Alexander

For conservatives, the issue is that for generations now, they have failed to make the case for their values. They haven't even conveyed conservative values to many of their children. And when they have, the university has often succeeded in undoing them. — Dennis Prager

In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that "liberty inheres in some sensible object," are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable "liberty" at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise. — Russell Kirk

United States today, there is a widespread, malignant thought form that other people are the problem. Conservatives tend to blame liberals for our problems, while liberals blame conservatives. The media blames almost everyone, and almost everyone blames immigrants. Some people are convinced homosexuals are the problem, while others think that single mothers are the problem. Still others think the Christian Right is the problem, and far, far too many people think that our parents were the problem. The entire culture has become a hysterical blame session. — Marianne Williamson

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs' attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives' attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs' importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT's cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people's English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. — David Foster Wallace

Sometimes when I observe contemporary U.S. culture, with its hard fronts and nasty culture wars, I have a strange sense that I've seen something like it before - in the Communist and semitotalitarian state in which I grew up. The issues and positions are very different, but the spirit is strangely familiar. In all public discussion, there was a party line that people had to toe; if you diverged, you were deemed disloyal and suspected of betraying the cause. I sense a similar spirit today among both progressives and conservatives in the United States when it comes to many hot-button issues, including Islam. — Miroslav Volf

What the United States needs is for a unifying, positive, aspirational force to sweep through our national community. American conservatives have a generational opportunity to become precisely this kind of force. We have a shot, if we take it, to help every single American build a better life, and unite our nation in the process. — Arthur C. Brooks

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

Conservatives try to adjust their behavior to fit the facts of nature. Liberals try to adjust the facts of nature to fit their behavior. — Frank Turek

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table. — Gyles Brandreth

British Conservatives base their entire approach to politics on the rule of law, and rightly so. — William Randolph Hearst

When teachers try to teach, nurses try to nurse, small businesses try to serve their clients and the police try to arrest criminals, there is always a regulator or three breathing down their necks. Conservatives want to make people's lives easier. — John Redwood

One topic which often brings liberals and conservatives together in the U.S. is Iran. There is a general consensus that the Revolution was the embodiment of backwardness and barbarism. — Mohammad Marandi

It is the ultimate conceit of conservatives: that more than half of American voters don't make up more than half of our country. — Kurt Eichenwald

Ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming - strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean-energy technologies in the market. — Joseph J. Romm

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. — Christopher Hitchens

Conservatives were griping for decades about liberal media and nobody paid attention. Now, all of a sudden, one news channel has gotten a whole new community of people freaked out. — Michael K. Powell

I prefer music but sometimes if there's on talk radio - someone might be on that I like. I listen to the old - to "Air America," down at the - liberal talk shows and things like that I find kind of nice, their criticizing the conservatives. I find that quite relaxing, entertaining, but music, a lot of music. — Robert Barry

I think that in politics, when people want to discredit a particular position, they say, "Oh, they are liberals," or "They are conservatives; we are centrists." Everybody wants to be a centrist. — Robert Reich

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians. — George Orwell

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

The moral matrix of liberals, in America and elsewhere, rests more heavily on the Care foundation than do the matrices of conservatives — Jonathan Haidt

For too long, our controversies seem to boil down to conservatives and liberals (or, if you prefer, traditionalists and progressives) talking past each other for the benefit of stirring up their loyalists, as partisans do in the primary campaigns of electoral politics. The rest of us are expected to line up with our team just as soon as they show their colors. — Ken Wilson

Conservatives want to be your daddy, telling you what to do and what not to do. Liberals want to be your mommy, feeding you, tucking you in, and wiping your nose. Libertarians want to treat you as an adult. — David Boaz

Ultimately, the Populists caved to the pressure and abandoned their former allies. "While the [Populist] movement was at the peak of zeal," Woodward observed, "the two races had surprised each other and astonished their opponents by the harmony they achieved and the good will with which they co-operated."27 But when it became clear that the conservatives would stop at nothing to decimate their alliance, the biracial partnership dissolved, and Populist leaders re-aligned themselves with conservatives. Even Tom Watson, who had been among the most forceful advocates for an interracial alliance of farmers, concluded that Populist principles could never be fully embraced by the South until blacks were eliminated from politics. — Michelle Alexander

Conservatives have a different view of a lot of issues versus our friends on the other side. The election determines how that shakes out. — Lindsey Graham

Economic conservatives like immigration reform, and in fact, many of them supported the bill that John McCain and I put together in the Senate. — Chuck Schumer

There is a reason why conservatives talk about 'government' and not 'self-government,' because to refer to the latter is to concede that 'the government' is really the most basic product of our political commonwealth, that it is what we produce among ourselves so as to order the production of everything else that we do together. — Charlie Pierce

Conservative policies have on the whole worked - insofar as any set of policies can be said to 'work' in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of. — Bill Kristol

CNN recently ran a sort of roundup article on why some conservatives say that Trump talk is fascist. The roundup included this tweet from Iowa Republican radio host, very influential guy in Iowa Republican caucuses, Steve Deace. Quote, "If [Barack] Obama proposed the same religion registry as Trump, every conservative in the country would call it what it is - creeping fascism." — Rachel Maddow

The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Oh absolutely. Look they hate all conservatives but they have a special kind of loathing for women conservatives. — Monica Crowley

Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem. — Ellen Willis

Conservatives are always right about everything. We are. We are. — Monica Crowley

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I was one of the hardest-hitting conservatives on George W. Bush. Republicans didn't like me on George W. Bush. Republicans still don't like me on many things. If any Republican thinks I've been hard on Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or any of these guys, wait until Mitt Romney gets into office. I'll hold his feet to the fire just as much. — Glenn Beck

When Conservatives crusade against government while they are trying to be appointed to head the government, I think that's weird! — Rachel Maddow

When caring for your neighbor becomes a compulsory obligation imposed by government instead of voluntary, charity turns to confiscation and freedom to achieve to involuntary servitude. To liberals, compassion seems to be defined by how many people are dependent on the government; to conservatives, it's defined by how many people no longer need help. One promotes dependence, the other freedom, responsibility and achievement. — Star Parker

To the dismay of more moderate Conservatives, she rejected the conventional wisdom of compromise and consensus. "The Old Testament prophets," she preached, "didn't go out on the highways saying, 'Brothers, I want consensus.' They said, 'This is my faith and my vision! This is what I passionately believe! — New Word City

In the battles over the Bible in the twentieth century, and now in the twenty-first century, conservatives moved away from the word infallible in favor of inerrant. This happened in part because theological liberals had begun using the word infallible to mean something more like ... oh, I don't know, something more like fallible. And that reminds me of something else. How is it that liberals preen themselves for the virtues of frankness and honesty when they do things like this to words like infallible, or to words like frank and honest for that matter? Or even words like liberal. And now, in the latest go-rounds, the same kind of thing is happening to the word inerrant. Men with solemn faces and a shaky donor base affirm the inerrancy of the Bible, and they also affirm that this is not inconsistent with the subtle truth that the Bible has mistakes in it. The serpent was craftier than all the beasts of the field, having completed some post-doctoral work in Europe. — Anonymous

To those of you who would classify yourselves as conservatives I would say, meditate long and hard on Jesus' saying "Whatever you do to the least of these you have done to me". — Peter Kreeft

Mr. Cain would structurally change the voting demographic. There would be more black economic conservatives, and the Democrats would lose their stranglehold on the black vote. — Alveda King

We must return conservatives to the majority in the U.S. Senate. — Jeb Bush

So a lot of our shows where even we think we've taken a very deliberate stand, liberals say, 'That's awesome, you took on the conservatives' same show and conservatives say 'That's awesome, you took on liberals.' — Matt Stone

Thus did I begin to see, or thought I began to see, how the British Conservatives kept the fierce, irrational loyalty of those whom they exploited. — Christopher Hitchens