Quotes On Conservatism

It's time for "Fun with Quotes". I'll start off with a couple from yours truly.

"Coddle the rich and punish the poor" is the foundation of modern American conservatism.

"Modern American Conservatism requires neither conscience nor critical thinking. Introspection and concern for others are not needed to believe everything is just fine, the status quo is the way it's supposed to be, and it provides the best of all possible social and economic systems."- Dave Dubya 

Some old adages come to mind:

"While Liberals are afraid that somewhere, someone is not getting what they need, conservatives are afraid that somewhere, someone is getting something they don't deserve."

And of course:

“Conservatism is the dread fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as an equal.”

Some other views from history and the recent past:

“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”
Mark Twain

“You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!”
Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Expect poison from the standing water.”
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”
Alexis de Tocqueville

“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.”
John W. Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience

"The key to understanding the chaos in high Right Wing Authoritarian minds is that, compared to most people, they simply copied their ideas from trusted sources and have never checked to see how well they all fit together." 
John Dean, Authoritarian Nightmare

"The source of the dogmatism is obvious. People who have memorized rather than thought out their beliefs do not know why what they believe is true. True believers simply refuse to change their views. They cannot explain why they are right, but they know they are."
John Dean, Authoritarian Nightmare

“There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.”
Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism

“The Right thinks that the breakdown of the family is the source of crime and poverty, and this they very insightfully blame on the homosexuals, which would be amusing were it not so tragic. Families and 'family values' are crushed by grinding poverty, which also makes violent crime and drugs attractive alternatives to desperate young men and sends young women into prostitution. Family values are no less corrupted by the corrosive effects of individualism, consumerism, and the accumulation of wealth. Instead of shouting this from the mountain tops, the get-me-to-heaven-and-the-rest-be-damned Christianity the Christian Right preaches is itself a version of selfish spiritual capitalism aimed at netting major and eternal dividends, and it fits hand in glove with American materialism and greed.”
John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church

“The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column—in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally—was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth—Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round.”
Paul Krugman 

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.”
G.K. Chesterton

“Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.”
Sigmund Freud
 
“Conservatives are more religious than liberals--although there is no evidence that they're nicer people because of it.”
Andy Rooney
 
“To a right-winger, unions are awful. Why do right-wingers hate unions? Because collective bargaining is the power that a worker has against the corporation. Right-wingers hate that.”
Janeane Garofalo
 
“A conservative is someone who believes in reform. But not now.”
Mort Sahl
 
“A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.”
Woodrow Wilson
 
“Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving.”
Chuck Klosterman
 
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
David Frum
 
”If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win by fairness, facts and reason, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject fairness, facts and reason.”
Dave Dubya