Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action. - Will Durant

...Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine’s Englishman taking his pleasures sadly), and concluded on his stren gospel of pleasure by committing suicide. His noble epic “on the Nature of Things", follows Epicurus in damning pleasure with faint praise. Almost contemporary with Caesar and Pompey, he lived in the midst of turmoil and alarms; his nervous pen is forever inditing prayers to tranquility and peace. One pictures him as a timid soul whose youth had been darkened with religious fears; for he never tires of telling his readers that there's no hell, except here, and there are no gods except gentlemanly ones who live in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds, and never intrude in the affairs of men.

India was the motherland of our race
and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages.
India was the mother of our philosophy,
of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in
Christianity... of self-government and democracy.
In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all.

So the conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it — perhaps as much more valuable as roots are more vital than grafts.