Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes About Conservatism

• Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Luxury, Politics

  Essays, Second Series "New England Reformers" (1844)

• Conservatism, ever more timorous and narrow, disgusts the children, and drives them for a mouthful of fresh air into radicalism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Air, Radicalism

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.334

• Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Men, Sick

  Essays, Second Series "New England Reformers" (1844)

• All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effiminated by position of nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Luxury, Parent

• 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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Reform, Politics

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1191, Delphi Classics

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Gratitude, Prayer, Memories

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1191, Delphi Classics

• There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Facts, Argument, Certain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.174, Library of America

• 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 ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Party, Fighting, Names

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2001). “Nature, Addresses and Lectures”, p.279, The Minerva Group, Inc.

• Conservatism is affluent and openhanded, but there is a cunning juggle in riches. I observe that they take somewhat for everythingthey give. I look bigger, but am less; I have more clothes, but am nit so warm; more armor, but less courage; more books, but less wit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Clothes, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.184, Library of America

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