Russell Kirk Quotes - Page 2

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• The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action.

  Russell Kirk

  Art, Book, Taken

  15 Copy quote

• The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.

  Russell Kirk

  Order, Law, Giving

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Roots of American Order”, p.22, Open Road Media

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• Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

  Russell Kirk

  Reform, Surgery

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Politics of Prudence”, p.34, Open Road Media

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• Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride.

  Russell Kirk

  Loneliness, Pride, Men

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.41, Regnery Publishing

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• The modern spectacle of vanished forests and eroded lands, wasted petroleum and ruthless mining, national debts recklessly increased until they are repudiated, and continual revision of positive law, is evidence of what an age without veneration does to itself and its successors.

  Russell Kirk

  Law, Land, Age

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

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• Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

  Russell Kirk

  Moving, Interesting, Ethics

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• Humility, which Burke ranked high among the virtues, is the only effectual restraint upon this congenital vanity; yet our world has nearly forgotten the nature of humility. Submission to the dictates of humility formerly was made palatable to man by the doctrine of grace; that elaborate doctrine has been overwhelmed by modern presumption.

  Russell Kirk

  Humility, Men, Vanity

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays”, p.364, Open Road Media

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• ...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.

  Russell Kirk

  Degradation, Conservative, Pollution

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• Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

  Russell Kirk

  Real, Order, Doctrine

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.30, Regnery Publishing

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• A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

  Russell Kirk

  Government, Healthy, Liberty

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Politics of Prudence”, p.37, Open Road Media

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• The issue of environmental quality is one which transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a cause which can attract, and very sincerely, liberals, conservatives, radicals, reactionaries, freaks, and middle-class straights.

  Russell Kirk

  Environmental Quality, Class, Issues

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• Some 'separation' zealots would expunge any vestige of religious observance in public schools. Many of the same anti-religious fanatics would like to wipe out of existence all church-related schools, by regulation or taxation, so that universal ignorance of the life of spirit should prevail.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Religious, School

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

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• The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.

  Russell Kirk

  Christian, Religious, Expression

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• A society which denies the heart its role becomes, in very short order, a heartless society.

  Russell Kirk

  Heart, Order, Interesting

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• Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

  Russell Kirk

  Ignorant, Mind, Desire

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• Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.

  Russell Kirk

  Government, Property

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

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• Mine was not an Enlightened mind, I now was aware: it was a Gothic mind, medieval in its temper and structure. I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful.

  Russell Kirk

  Organization, Perfect, Mind

  Russell Kirk (1963). “Confessions of a bohemian Tory: episodes and reflections of a vagrant career”

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• Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

  Russell Kirk

  Mean, Law, Understanding

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Roots of American Order”, p.118, Open Road Media

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• The principle of real leadership ignored, the immortal objects of society forgotten, practical conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of private enterprise, economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.

  Russell Kirk

  Real, Special, Principles

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

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• The aim of any good constitution is to achieve in a society a high degree of political harmony, so that order and justice and freedom may be maintained.

  Russell Kirk

  Wisdom, Order, Justice

  Russell Kirk (1990). “The Conservative Constitution”, Gateway Books

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• Principle #6: Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.

  Russell Kirk

  Innovation, Progress, Torches

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• I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle.

  Russell Kirk

  Loyalty, Organization, Numbers

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays”, p.213, Open Road Media

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• It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.

  Russell Kirk

  College, Typical, Waste

  Russell Kirk (1963). “Confessions of a bohemian Tory: episodes and reflections of a vagrant career”

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• True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity.

  Russell Kirk

  Past, Men, Humanity

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.57, Regnery Publishing

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• ...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.

  Russell Kirk

  Beautiful, Ambition, Men

  Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.35, Regnery Publishing

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