Quotes from Roger Scruton

My main argument is that environmental destruction comes when people externalise their costs and pass them on to future generations. That is obviously something that large enterprises do and they become large by doing it.

You cannot own a symphony or a novel in the way you can own a Damien Hirst. As a result there are far fewer fake symphonies or fake novels than there are fake works of visual art.

I've always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don't just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.

There has been throughout this country and throughout Europe really an attempt silence the conservative voice. We get identified, caricatured and then demonised and made to look as though we are some kind of sinister, fascist, racist kind of people.

What makes a politician accountable is not that there are millions of people who vote, but that there are procedures of government that force him to account for himself.

Given the right to - given the opportunity to vote, I voted for Brexit because I've never approved really of the European Union, I never approved of it because of its attempts to confiscate national sovereignty in all the issues that matter.

Conservative voters tend to believe that the 'climate change' agenda has been foisted upon us by an unaccountable lobby of politicised intellectuals.

Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.

The world of art, I have suggested, is full of fakes. Fake originality, fake emotion and the fake expertise of the critics - these are all around us and in such abundance that we hardly know where to look for the real thing. Or perhaps there is no real thing?

Conservatism, for me, is the philosophy and the politics of attachment.

Life at home wasn't very good and I had really left by the time I was 16 and didn't go back until after Cambridge when I went to look after my mother when she was dying.

America has this wonderful ability to recover from its own mistakes, which is why it's so hugely superior to China.

I've never been an optimist, but that's fine because pessimists have the possibility of being agreeably surprised.

Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.

Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.

It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.

Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.

When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded.

What makes us human is that we ask questions. All the animals have interests, instincts and conceptions. All the animals frame for themselves an idea of the world in which they live. But we alone question our surroundings.

The sanctity of private property is so fundamental a part of the American settlement that the country's conservatives look with suspicion on any policy that seems to prevent people from doing what they will with what is theirs.

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

I'm a hate figure for a certain kind of half-educated politically correct person.