American Conservatism Quotes

Classical liberalism . . . does not wholly define modern American conservatism. There is an added element: a concern with social and civic virtue. The term virtue has become a bad word in some quarters of American life. (It is especially unpopular with the chronically wicked and depraved.) Young people, especially, tend to associate it with finger-wagging and with people who tell you how to live your life. This is a very narrow view of virtue: It applies only to what it is good to do, rather than what it is good to be and what it is good to love. . . .

Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. . . . But for conservatives, these lapses do not provide an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy--professing one thing but doing another--is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

Especially appealing to the planter elite was the conservatism of the American Revolution. Indeed, according to their reading, it had been so conservative that it hardly deserved the title of revolution at all. The goal had been simple political independence, and the issue of home rule had not expanded to include the dangerous question of who should rule at home. The men who made the revolution had maintained control in victory. ~ James L. Roark

Ted Cruz is not the official spokesman for American conservatism. If you want somebody who has been out there, who has offered an alternative - the person who offered an alternative, for example, is ... Paul Ryan. ~ Charles Krauthammer

The ideals of free enterprise and global leadership, central to American conservatism, are responsible for the greatest reduction in human misery since mankind began its long climb from the swamp to the stars. ~ Arthur C. Brooks

American Conservatism is finished, and its remaining adherents are, whether they know it or not, merely ghosts wandering, mazed, in the daylight. ~ Revilo P. Oliver

If the Constitution doesn't say anything about a woman's right to abortion, I'm damn sure it doesn't say anything about the rights of the unborn. ~ Israel Morrow

To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped. ~ Russell Kirk

American conservatism depends on its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making connections about the world, connections that until recent were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. ~ Thomas Frank

My wife said I look like a Latin American dictator. I said, 'That's what I am' ~ Oscar De La Renta

The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt. ~ Raymond Chandler

It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos, and women, who powered our victory in 2008, stand together once again. ~ Barack Obama

Look! I've been in the Pentagon like four times, but I'm not really even sure what the Pentagon does! I'm supposed to fight crime, but I don't even know how laws get passed! I mean... Truth, Justice and the American Way? I stopped taking social studies when I was like fifteen!
I grew up in Westchester, and have never traveled anywhere else without this stupid domino mask on my face! Am I the only one who's scared that people are looking to me for answers because I can lift a car over my head?! This is crazy! ~ Brennan Lee Mulligan

My experience politically has always been that one-word definition of politics: money. Keep your eye on the buck. And that tells you where the American people are going to be. ~ Douglas Wilder

I have spent too long training myself to speak with an American accent, it's ingrained. I spend 16 hours a day on set speaking with an American accent. Now, when I try to speak with an Aussie accent, I just sound like a caricature of myself. ~ Poppy Montgomery

In the eighteenth century, with the growth of publishing and with the intellectual climate of the Enlightenment, there was a great demand for new historical writing. The greatest product of this was The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a massive six-volume work published between 1776 and 1788, precisely between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The context is important, as the author Edward Gibbon was examining not only the greatness of Rome, but the forces which brought about its decay.
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Gibbon's interpretation of history was controversial, especially in its examination of the growth of Christianity, but his accurate scholarship and engaging prose style have made The Decline and Fall the most enduring work of history in English.

In the eighteenth century, history is seen as a branch of belles-lettres, and it subsumes within it scriptural authority on the one hand, and fictional narrative on the other. History is, in effect, the new secular authority of the Enlightenment, and comes to be a very wide-ranging category of writing. ~ Ronald Carter

In my opinion, assassination theories will continue to revolve around these assassinations as they have around several other significant assassinations in American history. The assassination of President Lincoln comes to mind. ~ Louis Stokes

We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death. ~ Charlton Heston

I don't understand why black people have been so quiescent, so passive over the hundreds of years of American history. Why hasn't there been more violence, more armed struggle? I know answers to some of that, but it seems to me it's an issue of faith, an abiding faith in some sort of great beyond, or great spirit, or even in the American dream. ~ John Edgar Wideman

In a large sense, Main Street is the American origin story. It's an evocation of the American creation tale, and the kick is that the American origin story is a never-ending one, a perpetual tale of creation and re-creation, an eternal now. ~ Leslie Le Mon

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience. ~ Tallulah Bankhead

Super PACs and a corrupt campaign finance system are destroying American democracy. We're proud that we have received four million individual contributions, more than any candidate in American history at this point. ~ Bernie Sanders

The first truly powerful and widespread impulse to anti-intellectualism in American politics was, in fact, given by the Jacksonian movement. Its distrust of expertise, its dislike for centralization, its desire to uproot the entrenched classes, and its doctrine that important functions were simple enough to be performed by anyone, amounted to a repudiation non only of the system of government by gentlemen which the nation had inherited from the eighteenth century, but also of the special value of the educated classes in civic life. ~ Richard Hofstadter

Edward Albee, our greatest living playwright, American treasure, who watched Doubt from beginning to end and loved it, all while a bored B. J. Novak slept on him. ~ Mindy Kaling

One result of this productive system is that the middle class has grown from being about 15 percent of the population in 1920 to being 86 percent of the population in 2011. While some of the population always seem to live at the poverty line, the vast majority of Americans today are affluent compared to their grandparents. They have the money to buy the products produced by American industry. In the process, the definition of poverty has changed. The majority of Americans who are classified by the government as living at the poverty level have indoor plumbing, color television sets, cell phones, air-conditioning, washers and dryers, microwaves, automobiles, and access to free health care. They are also a significant buying group. ~ Arthur Hughes

I frankly can't wait, because the idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I just can't imagine, I can't imagine the American people can imagine ... ~ Mitt Romney

Let us be thankful for the fools,' Mark Twain wrote with typically dark humor in 1897. 'But for them the rest of us could not succeed.' Of all the paradoxes of failure in America, surely this is the darkest. Long ago, we saw through old fables of rags to riches; it is still fun to dream, but we know that we are partaking of a cultural myth. But if we do not quite believe in that kind of success, our faith in the myths of failure is unshaken. We are merrily cynical about whether the average tycoon really tugged on those bootstraps, but we still believe with deadly seriousness that the reasons for failure are usually individual-- "in the man." Failure is not the dark side of the American Dream; it is the foundation of it. The American Dream gives each of us the chance to be a born loser. ~ Scott A. Sandage

I was sick and tired of being an English actor who did a lot of American movies because I was cheap and good. ~ Daniel Craig

The first American ancestor of our name was a younger son of these old Devonshire people, and came to the Virginia colony in the reign of Charles the First. ~ John Sergeant Wise

Many members of that early band of twentieth-century pilgrims must have yearned for the honesty of Southern landscapes where even if they were the targets of hate mongers who wanted them dead, they were at least credited with being alive. Northern whites with their public smiles of liberal acceptance and their private behavior of utter rejection wearied and angered the immigrants. ~ Maya Angelou

School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites. ~ Michael Emerson

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff. ~ Will Self

One of the great things and one of the horrible things about the American character is this extraordinary optimism and arrogance that everything will continue to be great and keep looking up. ~ John Wells

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked what book he could give the Soviets to teach them about the advantages of American society, he pointed to the Sears catalogue. ~ Alain De Botton

42. What is the name of her first EP? Title 43. When was her first EP released? September 9, 2014 44. What was she nominated for at the 2014 American Music Awards? New Artist of the Year 45. What was she nominated for at the 2014 MTV Europe Music Awards? Best Song with a Social Message 46. What was she nominated for at the 2014 NewNowNext Awards? Best New Female Musician 47. What was she nominated for at the 2014 Capricho Awards? Revelation International 48. What was she nominated for at the 2015 People's Choice Awards? Favorite Breakout Artist and Favorite Song 49. What was she nominated for at the 2015 Grammy Awards? Record of the Year and Song of the Year 50. Which albums of hers are self-released? I'll Sing with You and Only 17 ~ Nancy Smith

The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible, like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist. ~ John Updike

I don't believe in the theory that the United States is reducing its presence in the Middle East. Quite the contrary, in the Gulf, we see an increase in American military presence, as well as an increase in American investments. The argument is more accurate when one says America is focusing more attention to the Far East. But I don't believe it comes at the expense of the Middle East. ~ Adel Al-Jubeir

Totalizing and dangerous views of "American culture" and "nationhood" can be found in current attempts to portray "Christian values" or particular constructions of "family values" as constitutive of "American culture" and "the American way of life." Views of "American culture" that picture American society as comprised of "free individuals," and of American institutions as already fair and egalitarian, obscure the ways in which various forms of institutional discrimination impede the entry and flourishing of members of marginalized groups. ~ Uma Narayan