"A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time"
About this Quote
The line skewers a temperament: the conservative as one who mistrusts novelty and trusts what time has already tested. It is a witty exaggeration, compressing a complex disposition into a single reflex of resistance. The joke lands because it contains a recognizable truth. Tradition and precedent can feel like accumulated wisdom, the distilled outcomes of countless experiments already run by history. By contrast, a first-time act looks like an unpriced risk, full of unseen costs and cascading consequences.
Thomas Fuller, an English writer fond of aphorisms and proverbial wisdom, lived in a culture marked by religious and political upheavals where appeals to custom carried real weight. His punchline takes aim at a style of thinking that prefers the known to the unknown, the inherited to the improvised. Yet the line is not simply a sneer; it also illuminates why that preference arises. Institutions survive by hedging against ruin. Law builds itself on precedent. Communities stabilize themselves by doing again what worked before.
The flaw is obvious and deliberate. If nothing were ever done for the first time, nothing would ever be done at all. Every tradition began as an innovation that someone dared to try. An absolute veto on novelty shrinks prudence into paralysis. Still, the opposite error is just as perilous: a cult of the new that ignores the tuition paid by past failures. Fullers aphorism lingers because it clarifies the tension between custodianship and experiment. Good judgment asks not for novelty or tradition in the abstract, but for reasons. Sometimes the old way deserves deference because it has quietly solved problems we no longer see; sometimes the first time is overdue because the old way has been masking harms. The art of politics, policy, and daily life lies in knowing when to bear the risks of a first time and when to trust what time has already proved.
Thomas Fuller, an English writer fond of aphorisms and proverbial wisdom, lived in a culture marked by religious and political upheavals where appeals to custom carried real weight. His punchline takes aim at a style of thinking that prefers the known to the unknown, the inherited to the improvised. Yet the line is not simply a sneer; it also illuminates why that preference arises. Institutions survive by hedging against ruin. Law builds itself on precedent. Communities stabilize themselves by doing again what worked before.
The flaw is obvious and deliberate. If nothing were ever done for the first time, nothing would ever be done at all. Every tradition began as an innovation that someone dared to try. An absolute veto on novelty shrinks prudence into paralysis. Still, the opposite error is just as perilous: a cult of the new that ignores the tuition paid by past failures. Fullers aphorism lingers because it clarifies the tension between custodianship and experiment. Good judgment asks not for novelty or tradition in the abstract, but for reasons. Sometimes the old way deserves deference because it has quietly solved problems we no longer see; sometimes the first time is overdue because the old way has been masking harms. The art of politics, policy, and daily life lies in knowing when to bear the risks of a first time and when to trust what time has already proved.
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| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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