Nearly everyone who thinks seriously about anything will tell you they think for themselves. The opposite – parroting other people’s ideas and opinions – is widely derided on both the left and right, and one side will frequently accuse the other of repeating things they read in The New York Times or saw on a Tucker Carlson podcast.

The problem is that, to one degree or another, we all outsource our thinking and are influenced by ideas that are not our own. How could it be otherwise? The real measure of thinking for yourself, then, is perhaps the ability to change your mind, take the view that runs contrary to your group, not out of contrariness but because you’ve followed a thought a little further than is comfortable.

The writers and thinkers below understood this better than most.

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There is a caricature of the conservative that’s become so familiar it barely needs describing: reactionary, nostalgic and allergic to progress. It conjures the image of someone who thinks nothing should ever change because nothing was ever wrong.

The thinkers below had no patience for that caricature, and neither should you. What unites them is an understanding that good things are fragile and traditions useful; that the work of building them is slow, while tearing them down is easy and likely irreversible.

The selection of quotes features Roger Scruton above all because he distils, better than anyone since Chesterton (also included), the qualities of the conservative disposition and why it’s worth embracing rather than rejecting. You’ll also find Burke (a great inspiration to Scruton) and Nick Cave – an outlier in a popular culture that rewards progressive slogans and disdains anything that sounds a bit to the right.

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Imagine losing all your political freedoms. What would it look like? Perhaps you picture the blaze of revolution – a political earthquake, jackboots marching through the streets. That happens, of course. History is full of it.

But the more likely scenario is freedom withering away bit by bit, surrendered on promises of greater security and personal safety. The truth is that many of us are willing to give up our freedoms and quick to trust administrators and experts to act in the greater good. Those less inclined shouldn’t be surprised when a police squad eventually turns up to ask about something you posted online.

The thinkers below understood this: that political freedom is easy to give away and almost impossible to reclaim, especially when it is taken under the auspices of good intentions.

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