“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist
The New Yorker (12 September 1970).
“Now if Conservative has any meaning at all, it means anti-Radical. The Radicals are the only inheritors of the revolutionary views which the Conservative party was set up to counteract; and the two can no more act together, if both are honest, than a weasel can act with a rat. Hostility to Radicalism, incessant, implacable hostility, is the essential definition of Conservatism. The fear that the Radicals my triumph is the only final cause that the Conservative party can plead for their own existence.”
Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), p. 12
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Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury112
British politician 1830–1903Related quotes
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician
Source: Quarterly Review, 127, 1869, p. 560
Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster
Source: Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938), p. 86
“The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
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Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Letter to Charles Attwood (7 June 1840), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 486
“Conservative: One who admires radicals a century after they're dead.”
Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods
Variants:
A conservative is someone who admires radicals a century after they're dead.
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Campaign speech at High Wycombe (27 November 1832), cited in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Vol. 1 (1882).
1830s
Context: I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few
R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer
Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 5 : Muerte De Boscaje
Context: Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.