A Quote by George Will

Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.

George Will

Quote Topics

Conservative Deal New New Deal Want

Quote Author

George Will
American - Journalist
Born: May 4, 1941

When you dig down, people are pretty progressive, by and large. I guess, I've said it many times - that a lot of people say we're a conservative country, that people are conservative. And my response to that is, yes, that's true, and you know what the people want to conserve most? The progressive traditions of our country - freedom of speech, and of the press and of assembly. Freedom to dissent. The freedom to practice your own religion or not practice religion as you see fit. Yes, we're conservative! We want to conserve those.

Tom Harkin

To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.

Ron Paul

Well, first of all, I don't want to debate the word conservative, but by my definition, a conservative is someone who wants to conserve the Constitution of the United States and the American tradition and law that no one is above the law.

Dan Rather

We are all "conservatives" in some sense, because we want to "conserve" some things while changing others. We are all "liberals" because we all want to be "free" in some respects. We are all "progressives" because we want to progress towards something: the question is, towards what? So instead of asking someone, are you conservative or liberal, right-wing or left-wing, why don't I ask what you want to conserve, and what to change, and why? Then we might finally have an intelligent debate about politics.

Stratford Caldecott

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

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even knows. These farmers produce valuable goods, of course; but they also conserve soil, they conserve water, they conserve wildlife, they conserve open space, they conserve scenery.

Wendell Berry

Progressives, in a way, are the new conservatives. We want to conserve what we fought to build.

Al Franken

Everyone is a liberal until they have something to conserve. Then they become a conservative.

Ronald Reagan

I would always argue to my students that Canada is not necessarily or inherently a left-wing country, and the United States is not necessarily the citadel of right-wing liberty. The obvious case there is Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which made the Americans much further left than the Canadians at the time, and Americans coming to Canada found us backward, conservative, and out of tune with the kind of free-spirited liberalism that there was in the States. Then things reversed, with medicare the prime example.

Robert Bothwell

40, 50 years ago, Americans - the majority of Americans did not want to accept these Vietnamese refugees who they saw as completely foreign. Now there are new foreigners - Syrians and other people from the Middle East, people of Muslim backgrounds. And the sense among many Americans is, well, these people are completely different from us, and they're not like the Vietnamese who are much more assimilable. And I think that's very, very doubtful. I think that the majority of these new foreigners, if given the opportunity, will be able to assimilate and deal with American culture.

Nguyen Viet Thang

I can trace my environmentally-friendly lifestyle back to my childhood. My father was a conservative Republican that liked to 'conserve'.

Ed Begley, Jr.

On some issues, I'm a staunch Conservative — like curtailing greenhouse gas emissions so that we can Conserve the environment.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The conservative idea is not that government has no role. You might have argued that in the thirties when conservatives opposed the New Deal.

Charles Krauthammer

Actually, I never really look at myself as a real radical activist; I am more the conservative. I mean, the conservatives are trying to conserve; the radicals are destroying the planet.