A Quote by Ariel Durant

The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.

Ariel Durant

Quote Topics

Change Conservative Radical Valuable

Quote Author

Ariel Durant
American - Author
May 10, 1898 - October 25, 1981

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.

Mark Twain

Every Christian should be both conservative and radical; conservative in preserving the faith and radical in applying it.

John Stott

I'm against ObamaCare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.... I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering... I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.

Newt Gingrich

I call myself a radical conservative. What's that? Well, let's analyze it. Go to the dictionary. Radical: One who gets to the roots of things. And I'm a conservative because I want to conserve the green of the grass, the potability of drinking water, the first amendment of the Constitution and whatever sanity we have left.

Studs Terkel

The opposite of liberal is stingy. The opposite of radical is superficial. The opposite of conservative is destructive. So I declare that I am a radical conservative liberal. Beware of men who use words to mean their opposites.

R. A. Lafferty

Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.

H. A. L. Fisher

The shortest way to change a radical into a conservative, a liberal into a tyrant, a man into a beast, is to give him power over his fellows.

Benjamin Tucker

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

W. Edwards Deming

I was lucky enough to build on the work of a number of people who had already run laps around this theory-building track. The original classification scheme, years ago, distinguished radical from incremental change. The theory said that established firms managed incremental change well, but would be expected to founder when their industry encountered a radical change.

Clayton Christensen

Do not be deceived by the way men of bad faith misuse words and names … Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.

R. A. Lafferty

You can write a radical Norwegian or a conservative Norwegian. And when I changed to a conservative Norwegian, I gained this distance or objectivity in the language. The gap released something in me, and in the writing, which made it possible for the protagonist to think thoughts I had never myself thought.

Karl Ove Knausgard

Bullfighting has some of the elements of a sport or contest, and in the United States most people think of it as a sport, an unfair sport. If you're in Spain or Mexico it's absolutely not a sport; it's not thought of as a sport and it's not written about as a sport. It has elements of public spectacle, but then so does, for example, the Super Bowl. It has elements of a deeply entrenched, deeply conservative tradition, a tradition that resists change, as you pointed out.

Bette Ford

...the differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.

Eric Hoffer

I am a very radical person - as radical now as I was when I was younger. So my books all have in common my search for understanding of the terrible world we are living in and ways to change it.