The culture has moved to the point where I find myself in the far left without having gone there. I still feel like I'm putting up my father's old Indiana farmer's values. I think I'm a conservative. I don't think these guys that call themselves "conservatives" really are; these guys are high rollers and plungers and bet-the-farm-on-slender-odds guys; they ain't conservatives. I think a conservative is somebody who cares about conserving the planet and the air and the water and the sky and the sun. It is something mean to say that mankind has fucked up the sunshine.

—Stephen Gaskin

politics conservation culture conservative sunshine

About Stephen Gaskin

Portrait of Stephen Gaskin

Stephen Gaskin (February 16, 1935 – July 1, 2014) was an American counterculture Hippie icon best known for his presence in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s and for co-founding "The Farm", a spiritual commune in 1970. He was a Green Party presidential primary candidate in 2000...

More quotations tagged with “conservative”

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

—Robert Anton Wilson

politics time change conservative liberal

To explain why we become attached to our birthplaces, we pretend that we are trees and speak of "roots." Look under your feet. You will not find gnarled growths sprouting through the soles. Roots, I sometimes think, are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.

—Salman Rushdie

myth home conservative place roots

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.

—Woodrow Wilson

politics thinking conservative

Conservatives have historically seen people falling through the cracks in society and said, That's the way things work, survival of the fittest. Liberals see people falling through the cracks and say, We've got to do something about those people falling through the cracks, so we need a strong government that can provide programs and assist those people. Populists say there shouldn't be any cracks; let's fix them.

—Jim Hightower

politics society government conservative liberal populism

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.

politics time change conservative radical

History

23 Nov 2014 Added