On Conservatism

‘The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything …or nothing.’
— Nancy Astor
‘Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.’
— William Bridges
‘The people who oppose your ideas the most are those who represent the establishment that your ideas will upset.’
— Anthony J. D’Angelo
‘The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.’
— Elbert Hubbard
‘The innovator has for enemies all who have done well under the old, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.’
— Niccolò Machiavelli
‘Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.’
— Richard Nixon
‘Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.’
— Bertrand Russell
‘Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation.’
— Mark Shepherd
‘When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.’
— Mark Twain
‘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
‘Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs.’
— Edgard Varèse
‘It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.’
— Voltaire