When certain self-righteous persons took an inflexible line with Oliver Cromwell, his very Cromwellian reply was, "Bethink ye, gentlemen, by the bowels of Christ, that ye may be mistaken." It was good advice. I hope nobody will take from me the privilege of finding myself mistaken. I should be sorry to think that the self of thirty years ago was as far along the path as the self of today, merely because he was a smug young jackanapes, or even that the paragon of today has as little room for improvement as would be allowed by his myopic complacency.
(Brand Blanshard, "The New Subjectivism in Ethics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 9 [March 1949]: 504-11, at 510)
Note from KBJ: A conservative is a progressive who hasn't yet been mugged.
