A liberal is a person whose interests aren’t at stake at the moment.

—Willis Player

A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.

 —Alfred E. Wiggam

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

—Robert Frost

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

—Woodrow Wilson

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

 —Robert Anton Wilson

What is conservativism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?

—Abraham Lincoln

Liberalism seems to be related to the distance people are from the problem.

—Whitney M. Young

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

 —John Kenneth Galbraith

A liberal is a man who is willing to spend somebody else’s money.

—Carter Glass

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

—Benjamin Disraeli

The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

—G.K. Chesterton

The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then get elected and prove it.

 —P.J. O’Rourke