Russell Kirk Quotes

Quotes about:

• Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

  Russell Kirk

  Inspirational, Change, Men

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.274, Regnery Publishing

  77 Copy quote

• The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

  Russell Kirk

  Thinking, Order, Justice

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Politics of Prudence”, p.21, Open Road Media

  67 Copy quote

• Every right is married to a duty; every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility; and there cannot be genuine freedom unless there exists also genuine order, in the moral realm and in the social realm.

  Russell Kirk

  Responsibility, Order, Moral

  Russell Kirk (1996). “Redeeming the Time”, Isi Books

  42 Copy quote

• If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.

  Russell Kirk

  Order, Soul, Want

  71 Copy quote

• I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.

  Russell Kirk

  Winning, Thinking, Sides

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays”, p.59, Open Road Media

  50 Copy quote

• We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.

  Russell Kirk

  Heaven, Earth, May

  Russell Kirk (1957). “The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Conservatism”

  5 Copy quote

• In any society, order is the first need of all. Liberty and justice may be established only after order is tolerably secure. But the libertarians give primacy to an abstract liberty. Conservatives, knowing that "liberty inheres in some sensible object," are aware that true freedom can be found only within the framework of a social order, such as the constitutional order of these United States. In exalting an absolute and indefinable "liberty" at the expense of order, the libertarians imperil the very freedoms they praise.

  Russell Kirk

  Order, Knowing, Giving

  Russell Kirk (1996). “Redeeming the Time”, Isi Books

  45 Copy quote

• Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.

  Russell Kirk

  Responsibility, Conservative, Married

  Russell Kirk (1996). “Redeeming the Time”, Isi Books

  29 Copy quote

• If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.

  Russell Kirk

  Order, Civilization, Ideas

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.11, Regnery Publishing

  34 Copy quote

• Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

  Russell Kirk

  Civilization, Intellectual, Together

  11 Copy quote

• The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding.

  Russell Kirk

  Sacrifice, Thinking, Discipline

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays”, p.275, Open Road Media

  7 Copy quote

• Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines.

  Russell Kirk

  Men, Class, Church

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.488, Regnery Publishing

  14 Copy quote

• Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.

  Russell Kirk

  Men, Decision, Intuition

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.38, Regnery Publishing

  38 Copy quote

• We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present

  Russell Kirk

  Reflection, Past, Theory

  39 Copy quote

• The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.

  Russell Kirk

  Religious, Character, Order

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.472, Regnery Publishing

  44 Copy quote

• Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

  Russell Kirk

  Rewards, Privilege, Duty

  16 Copy quote

• Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Religious, Insight

  Russell Kirk (1986). “The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty”, Univ Pr of Amer

  16 Copy quote

• If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Religious, Church

  Russell Kirk (1986). “The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty”, Univ Pr of Amer

  28 Copy quote

• The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Religious, Cities

  Russell Kirk (1986). “The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty”, Univ Pr of Amer

  17 Copy quote

• If men are discharged of reverence for ancient usage, they will treat this world, almost certainly, as if it were their private property, to be consumed for their sensual gratification; and thus they will destroy in their lust for enjoyment the property of future generations, of their own contemporaries, and indeed their very own capital.

  Russell Kirk

  Men, Lust, Sensual

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.44, Regnery Publishing

  14 Copy quote

• Nothing is more conservative than conservation

  Russell Kirk

  Conservative, Conservation

  14 Copy quote

• Real literature is something much better than a harmless instrument for getting through idle hours. The purpose of great literature is to help us to develop into full human beings.

  Russell Kirk

  Real, Purpose, Literature

  25 Copy quote

• Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego; in politics it must end in anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and Individualist.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Men, Ego

  9 Copy quote

• Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.

  Russell Kirk

  Kings, Men, Self

  6 Copy quote

• To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose.

  Russell Kirk

  Character, Men, Community

  Russell Kirk (1978). “The conservative mind: from Burke to Eliot”

  34 Copy quote

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