Francis I Quotes

The castle which conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad.

The masses of the people are no lovers of changes which run counter to immemorial custom

There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take. If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades.

Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation perceive anything as true, or seek its own interest, in any manner but as its forefathers have opined and acted.

The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

I'm not super-conservative, but a bit of tradition is nice.

There are people and interests that do not want change. It is not in their interest for this system to change.

Rule, and change nothing.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

A conservative is a man who will not look at the new moon out of respect for that ancient institution, the old one.

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

Courts and judges are very slow to change. They are reactive organizations.

The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.

The status quo is a powerful force.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas — uncertainty, progress, change — into crimes.

What was good enough for my father is good enough for me" is a treasured English axiom which, if strictly carried out, would have kept us to wooden ploughs and water clocks. In these days we need to be inoculated with some of the nervous energy of the Americans.

Inertia is as powerful a force in society and politics as it is on physics, and effecting change can be demanding and discouraging.

The Chinese move very slowly. Our customs are so fixed that it takes much time to change them.

New ideas are difficult just because they are new. Repetition has somehow plastered over the gaps and inconsistencies in the old ones, and the new cannot penetrate.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.