The hope of a new politics does not lie in formulating a left-wing reply to the right -- it lies in rejecting conventional political categories.

- Christopher Lasch

The term "free market" is really a euphemism. What the far right actually means by this term is "lawless market." In a lawless market, entrepreneurs can get away with privatizing the benefits of the market (profits), while socializing its costs (like pollution).

- Steve Kangas

Politics isn't about left versus right; it's about top versus bottom.

- Jim Hightower

Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world class boeuf bourguignon: if you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it well.

- Michael Wolfe

Those who want the government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide.

- Harry S Truman

America does not need two Republican parties.

- John Kerry

Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend.

- Christopher Lasch

I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny - Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.

- Margaret Chase Smith

The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it's been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.

- Will Rogers

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

- Frederick Douglass

We are either progressing or retrograding all the while. There is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.

- James Freeman Clarke

There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

- Johann Kaspar Lavater

Conservatives unwittingly side with the social forces that contribute to the destruction of traditional values.

- Christopher Lasch

Not one Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. You can not trust Republicans with your money.

- Howard Dean

The evidence is overwhelming that George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney have engaged in deceit and deception over going to war in Iraq. This is an impeachable offense.

- John Dean

Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidentially expect utopia. Both are wrong.

- Carolyn Heilbrun



It may be true that the government that governs best governs least. Unfortunately, the same is also true of the government that governs worst.

- Jane Elizabeth Auer



I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. [1952]

- Adlai Stevenson



Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills. [on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999]

- Tom DeLay



3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

- Ann Richards



Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.

- Paulo Freire



The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.

- Dave Barry



Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter, we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

The Conservative

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.

- Mort Sahl



Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

- John Stuart Mill



Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

- Winston Churchill



A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.

- Leo C. Rosten



There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better."

- William Ralph Inge



By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

- Woodrow Wilson



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



Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear.

- William E. Gladstone



The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

- G. K. Chesterton



The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.

- P. J. O'Rourke



A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

- Benjamin Disraeli



It is well known that the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.

- Hannah Arendt



Democrats (I think to myself) are liberals who believe the people are basically good, but that they need government help to organize their lives. They believe in freedom so fervently that they think it should be compulsory. They believe that the poor and ignorant are victims of an unfair system and that their circumstances can be improved if we give them help. Republicans (I think to myself) are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won't work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs.

- Andy Rooney



American liberals and conservatives share much of the same political heritage. Originally the term Liberal referred to the political and economic ideal of liberating individuals from unrepresentative and arbitrary governments. Early liberalism set in motion patterns for the rule of law that would guarantee individual rights, representation in law making, access to the courts, and protection of private property. Both conservatives and liberals are Liberal in this sense. But whereas American conservatives of various stripes have continued to place primary emphasis on individual freedom, the autonomy of private institutions, and limits to government in the economic area, American liberals have more frequently appealed to government to advance the liberation of individuals from economic, racial, and political disadvantages in society as a whole.

- James W. Skillen



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

- Robert Anton Wilson



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



Conservatives usually prefer twin beds, which may contribute to the fact that Canada has more Liberals.

- Peter C. Newman