Conservatism Quotes

“It is a premise of Enlightenment liberalism that the only legitimate purpose of government is to enable individuals to make use of the freedom that is theirs by nature.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery

“Unfortunately, there is much mediocre philosophy in circulation, and so one sometimes hears it said that There is no such thing as a family, only the individuals who make up the family. This is analogous to the claim that There is no such thing as a table, only the atoms that make up the table—which we also hear on occasion. But in reality, there are not only atoms and molecules. There are also tables.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery

“In the biblical metaphysics, the natures of things are neither perfect nor eternal, being part of a created universe that is subject to alteration and change. Similarly, reason is known to be flawed and unreliable. Like other aspects of man’s nature, it can be attributed to God only metaphorically and in a limited sense. As to the claim that the individual, by reasoning from principles that are evident in nature, can deduce the political and moral rules that are “according to nature” and by which mankind should live in all times and places—this procedure is unworkable because in the biblical account, it is as much a part of man’s nature to do evil as it is to do good.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery

“Recognizing that the reasoning individual is far more likely to be carried away by some worthless passing fashion than he is to discover a new and valuable truth, they prefer to uphold ideas and behaviors that have been tested for generations and have stood their ground. And where they introduce alterations, they do so according to the method of constructive reasoning.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery

“Thus conservatives seek to undertake repairs in such a way as to increase the weightiness and importance of the edifice of traditional institutions in the eyes of the public, thereby strengthening it even as alterations are introduced. The techniques for doing this are well known. Conservative leadership tends to introduce repairs, wherever possible, by means of limited shifts in the extent to which the respective elements of the tradition are honored.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery

“In the first place, we have the powerful impulses of man’s sexual nature, which, especially in adult males, are sufficient to establish passing sexual relations with women and men, adults and children, strangers and close family members, beasts and physical objects. If permitted to engage in sexual contact according to the impulses of their untamed sexual nature, human males (and some females) would pour their energies into a variety of ephemeral sexual relations, with pregnancy, childbirth, and the raising of children as an incidental byproduct arising from some of them.”
― Yoram Hazony, Conservatism: A Rediscovery