When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

About Ralph Waldo Emerson

Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and...

More quotations from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Feeling special is the worst kind of cage a person can build for himself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it a charm.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

More quotations tagged with “conservatives”

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

The true conservative is the man who has a real concern for injustices and takes thought against the day of reckoning.

—Hannah Arendt

The conservative in financial circles I have often described as a man who thinks nothing new ought ever to be adopted for the first time.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

—Benjamin Disraeli

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.

—Benjamin Disraeli

History

11 Jul 2015 Added