Quotes about conservation
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Pat Conroy photo
Rachel Caine photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why We Can't Wait (1964)
Context: Someone once wrote: "When you are right, you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative." The Negro knows he is right.

Eric Hoffer photo

“people with a sense of fulfillment think it is a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Garrison Keillor photo

“When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America

Gloria Steinem photo
Spider Robinson photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“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.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 July 2002) (see http://wist.info/galbraith-john-kenneth/7463/ )

T.S. Eliot photo

“But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Christianity and Culture: The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

Aldo Leopold photo
Philip Yancey photo
Robert W. Service photo
Peter Matthiessen photo
George Carlin photo
Hannah Arendt photo

“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).

“Science, as traditionally defined, is fundamental to conservation biology but does no good if isolated from "softer" issues such as ethics, sociology, and political strategy. Indeed, there is nothing more dangerous than science in an ethical vacuum.”

Reed Noss (1952)

[Conservation Biology, Whither Conservation Biology?, June 1993, 7, 2, 215–217, 10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020215.x, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1523-1739.1993.07020215.x] (quote from p. 215)

L. David Mech photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

Message to Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty written to Congress (8 Feb 1965), in Lyndon B. Johnson: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President (1965), Vol.1, 156. United States. President (1963-1969 : Johnson), Lyndon Baines Johnson, United States. Office of the Federal Register — 1970
1960s

Donald Barthelme photo

“What makes The Joker tick I wonder?” Fredric said. “I mean what are his real motivations?”
“Consider him at any level of conduct,” Bruce said slowly, “in the home, on the street, in interpersonal relations, in jail—always there is an extraordinary contradiction. He is dirty and compulsively neat, aloof and desperately gregarious, enthusiastic and sullen, generous and stingy, a snappy dresser and a scarecrow, a gentleman and a boor, given to extremes of happiness and despair, singularly well able to apply himself and capable of frittering away a lifetime in trivial pursuits, decorous and unseemly, kind and cruel, tolerant yet open to the most outrageous varieties of bigotry, a great friend and an implacable enemy, a lover and abominator of women, sweet-spoken and foul-mouthed, a rake and a puritan, swelling with hubris and haunted by inferiority, outcast and social climber, felon and philanthropist, barbarian and patron of the arts, enamored of novelty and solidly conservative, philosopher and fool, Republican and Democrat, large of soul and unbearably petty, distant and brimming with friendly impulses, an inveterate liar and astonishingly strict with petty cash, adventurous and timid, imaginative and stolid, malignly destructive and a planter of trees on Arbor Day—I tell you frankly, the man is a mess.”
“That’s extremely well said Bruce,” Fredric stated. “I think you’ve given a very thoughtful analysis.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“I was paraphrasing what Mark Schorer said about Sinclair Lewis,” Bruce replied.
“The Joker’s Greatest Triumph”.
Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

Jeremy Hardy photo
Edmund Burke photo

“We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature, and the means perhaps of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792)
1790s

Margaret Thatcher photo
Matt Taibbi photo
Ron Paul photo
Peter Hitchens photo

“The main enemy of conservatism in Britain is the Conservative Party.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

From 'The Cameron Delusion' (2010)

Scott McClellan photo
Roy A. Childs, Jr. photo
Ralph Klein photo

“I wasn't surprised that she crossed over to the Liberals. I don't think she ever did have a Conservative bone in her body. Well, maybe one.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: As quoted in "Welcome to Ralph's World: 10 of Ralph Klein's most colourful quotes" http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/welcome-to-ralph-s-world-10-of-ralph-klein-s-most-colourful-quotes-1.1216791, CTV News

Aron Ra photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Paul A. Samuelson photo
Didier Sornette photo

“Perhaps the most profound synthesis of physical sciences came from the realization that everything could be understood from "conservation laws" and symmetry principals.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 5, Modeling Financial Bubbles And Market Crashes, p. 136

Peter Hitchens photo
Max Boot photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Enoch Powell photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Robert P. George photo
Mona Charen photo
Stephen Harper photo
George Will photo

“For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Column, August 24, 2008, "Little Rhetoric Riding Hood" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will082408.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s

Clarence Darrow photo

“Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"

Lewis Mumford photo
Paul Keating photo

“Because in the end those kind of conservative tea-leaf-reading focus group driven polling types who I think led Kim into nothingness, he's got his life to repent in leisure now at what they did to him.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

On Kim Beazley's ALP Leadership, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

Henri Poincaré photo

“As we can not give a general definition of energy, the principle of the conservation of energy signifies simply that there is something which remains constant.”

Comme nous ne pouvons pas donner de l'énergie une définition générale, le principe de la conservation de l'énergie signifie simplement qu'il y a quelque chose qui demeure constant.
Source: The Value of Science (1905), Ch. 10: Is Science artificial?

Jon Postel photo

“TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.”

The "Robustness Principle", RFC 793 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0793.txt, Transmission Control Protocol, entire text of section 2.10 (September 1981).

Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Matt Drudge photo

“I am a conservative. I'm very much pro-life. If you go down the list of what makes up a conservative, I'm there almost all the way.”

Matt Drudge (1966) American internet journalist and talk radio host

The Drudge Retort http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/the-drudge-retort-6351876 (June 28, 2001)

Margaret Thatcher photo
Maxime Bernier photo

“If we want conservative principles to win the battle of ideas, we have to defend them openly, with passion and conviction.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

23 August 2018 http://www.maximebernier.com/why_i_am_leaving_the_conservative_party_of_canada
2018

Mike Rosen photo
Frederick II of Prussia photo
Temple Grandin photo
David Gross photo

“Remarkably, the building of the Standard Model — the theory of how particles and forces interact — was the success of the conservatives. It required no revolution at the foundational level. Normal physics, the kind that goes on experiment after experiment, produced the Standard Model.”

David Gross (1941) American particle physicist and string theorist

"Waiting for the Revolution" https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130524-waiting-for-the-revolution/, an interview of David Gross by Peter Byrne, Quanta Magazine (2013)

Stephen Harper photo
Richard Pipes photo
Ayn Rand photo
Robert Hunter (author) photo
John Major photo

“I have been a Member of Parliament for 18 years. I have been a member of the Government for 14 years, of the Cabinet for ten years and Prime Minister since 1990. When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do. I shall, therefore, advise my parliamentary colleagues that it would be appropriate for them to consider the selection of a new leader of the Conservative Party to lead the party through Opposition through the years that lie immediately ahead.”

John Major (1943) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Major's Speech", The Times, 3 May 1997, p. 2.
Statement in Downing Street on 2 May 1997 following the general election in which the Conservative Party was heavily defeated. Major was just about to resign as Prime Minister and announced his decision to stand down as party leader simultaneously.
1990s, 1997

Mumia Abu-Jamal photo

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014
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Roger Scruton photo
Norman Tebbit photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Robert Kuttner photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Alan Moore photo
John Danforth photo
Vincent Gallo photo
Anthony Zinni photo
David Cameron photo

“I am Conservative to the core of my being, as those who know me best will testify.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in Daily Telegraph, (23 January 2006)
2000s, 2006

Salman Rushdie photo
Ann Coulter photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Angelique Rockas photo
Masanobu Fukuoka photo
Bernard Goldberg photo
Karl Rove photo
Henry Ward Beecher photo

“When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

Jeffrey Tucker photo

“Why should conservatives care? We have every interest in seeing rock culture destroyed and crushed.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: "Die, Rock, Die!" by Jeffrey Tucker, The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, June 1997, UNZ.org, 2016-05-22 http://www.unz.org/Pub/RothbardRockwellReport-1997jun-00001,

Margaret Thatcher photo
Lew Rockwell photo
Peter Hitchens photo

“Many of the things which New Labour were doing had in fact been presaged by John Major [Conservative PM 1990-97], who really was the first New Labour Prime Minister.”

Peter Hitchens (1951) author, journalist

2013-03-23
This house believes that New Labour ruined Britain
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUHNFY1ksPw
On John Major

Babe Ruth photo

“Pitchers—real pitchers— know that their job isn't so much to keep opposing batsmen from hitting as it is to make them hit it at someone. The trouble with most kid pitchers is that they forget there are eight other men on the team to help them. They just blunder ahead, putting everything they have on every pitch and trying to carry the weight of the whole game on their shoulders. The result is that they tire out and go bad along in the middle of the game, and then the wise old heads have to hurry out and rescue them. I've seen a lot of young fellows come up, and they all had the same trouble. Take Lefty Grove over at Philadelphia, for instance. There isn't a pitcher in the league who has more speed or stuff than Lefty. He can do things with a baseball that make you dizzy. But when he first came into the league he seemed to think that he had to strike out every batter as he came up. The result was he'd go along great for five or six innings, and them blow. And he's just now learning to conserve his strength. In other words, he's learning that a little exercise of the noodle will save a lot of wear and tear on his arm.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

"Chapter III," Babe Ruth's Own Book of Baseball (1928), pp. 32-33; reprinted as "Babe Ruth's Own Story — Chapter III: Pitching the Keynote of Defense; The Pitcher's Job; Why Young Hurlers Fail," https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r0sbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=J0sEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6011%2C3899916 in The Pittsburgh Press (December 23, 1928), p. 52

Iain Banks photo
Tina Fey photo

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Jayant Narlikar photo
Leo Ryan photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The earliest example of this quotation is found in Jules Claretie's Portraits Contemporains (1875), where the following remark is ascribed to lawyer and academic Anselme Polycarpe Batbie: "Celui qui n’est pas républicain à vingt ans fait douter de la générosité de son âme; mais celui qui, après trente ans, persévère, fait douter de la rectitude de son esprit" (English: "He who is not a republican at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind").
According to research http://www.webcitation.org/query?id=1256577474900567&url=www.geocities.com/Athens/5952/unquote.html by Mark T. Shirey, citing Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, 1992, this quote was first uttered by mid-nineteenth century French historian and statesman François Guizot when he observed, Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. (N'être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d'un manque de cœur ; l'être après trente ans est preuve d'un manque de tête.) However, this ascription is based in an entry in Benham’s Book of Quotations Proverbs and Household Words (1936): the original place where Guizot said this has not been located. This quote has been attributed variously to George Bernard Shaw, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto von Bismarck, and others.
Furthermore, the Churchill Centre http://www.winstonchurchill.org, on its Falsely Attributed Quotations http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotations/quotes-falsely-attributed page, states "there is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this." Paul Addison of Edinburgh University is quoted as stating: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
Variants: Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.
If you are not a socialist by the time you are 25, you have no heart. If you are still a socialist by the time you are 35, you have no head.
Misattributed
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=nIuaBX8moLkC&q=%22fait+douter%22#v=snippet&q=%22fait%20douter%22&f=false
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/24/heart-head/

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo