Conservatism quotes

Oakeshott on empiricism/ pragmatism

“to be a conservative is to prefer the tried to the untried”

Oakeshott on not being constrained by ideology

conservatism was more “psychology than ideology”

Burke on Pragmatism/adaptation

“change in order to conserve”

Disraeli on pragmatism/ preventing a revolution

“the palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy”

Rand on separation of state and economy and state and church

"there must be a “complete separation of state and economics in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church”

Chesterton (traditional) on democracy of the dead/ tradition

“tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes: our ancestors”

Burke on tradition

“the accumulated wisdom of the ages…is the best source of virtue and goodness”

Rand on capitalism

“radical for capitalism”

Hobbes and his state of nature

“war of every man against every man” where life would be “nasty, brutish and short”

Oakeshott on why he is against revolution and radical reform

it should be ensured that “the cure is not worse than the disease”

Nozick on economic independence/anti state welfare

“the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others”

Burke on a natural hierarchy

“the wiser, stronger and more opulent” were on top

Nozick on atomic individualism

“there are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives”

Nozick  on welfare/ taxation

“legalized theft”

Burke on Adam Smith’s the wealth of nations

“perhaps the most important book ever written”

Burke on state intervention in the economy

state intervention may make it hard for consumers and producers to “mutually discover each others wants”

Disraeli on anti free market capitalism/ intervention to help the working class

“will gain and retain the conservatives the everlasting affection of the working classes”