It seems to me a barren thing this conservatism - an unhappy cross breed, the mule of politics that engenders nothing

In politics nothing is contemptible.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.

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.

Like Aristotle, conservatives generally accept the world as it is; they distrust the politics of abstract reason – that is, reason divorced from experience.