A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.

Alfred E. Wiggam

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy¹.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Speech in the House of Commons, Mar². 3, 1845

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical³ to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry⁴ the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832

The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.

Frank A. Vanderlip, From Farm Boy to Financier, chapter 25, 1935

A conservative is a man with two perfectly⁵ good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), radio address, Oct. 26, 1939

The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices⁶ and takes thought against the day of reckoning.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Speech in Syracuse, NY Sep. 29, 1936

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Notebook, 1935

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

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious⁷. They are conservatives after dinner.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882), New England Reformers, 1844

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

Robert Anton Wilson

I never dared to be radical when young

For fear it would make me conservative when old.

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963), 'Ten Mills,' A Further Range, 1936

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.

Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)