“A conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather.”
John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia
Quote from The Howard Era.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 July 2002) (see http://wist.info/galbraith-john-kenneth/7463/ )
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a supe…" by John Kenneth Galbraith?
John Kenneth Galbraith207
American economist and diplomat 1908–2006Related quotes
“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar
Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
“Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.”
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet
Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.
Il Convivio (1304–1307)
Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author
[Alan, Dershowitz, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303544604576429783247016492.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop, Casey Anthony: The System Worked, The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2011, July 7, 2011] published 2011-07-07
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.
Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician
Speech to the Zurich Economic Society “The New Renaissance” (14 March 1977) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103336 <br class="br">Leader of the Opposition
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) British philosopher and political economist
Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485 https://books.google.it/books?id=w-I3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA485
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
Context: Do we find ourselves a species naturally free from conflict? We do not. There has not, apparently, been in our evolution a kind of rationalization which might seem a possible solution to problems of conflict--namely, a takeover by some major motive, such as the desire for future pleasure, which would automatically rule out all competing desires. Instead, what has developed is our intelligence. And this in some ways makes matters worse, since it shows us many desirable things that we would not otherwise have thought of, as well as the quite sufficient number we knew about for a start. In compensation, however, it does help us to arbitrate. Rules and principles, standards and ideals emerge as part of a priority system by which we guide ourselves through the jungle. They never make the job easy--desires that we put low on our priority system do not merely vanish--but they make it possible. And it is in working out these concepts more fully, in trying to extend their usefulness, that moral philosophy begins. Were there no conflict, it [moral philosophy] could never have arisen.