Quotes from Roger Scruton

Subsequent revolutions have in like manner regarded the Church as Public Enemy number 1, precisely because it creates a realm of value and authority outside the reach of the state. It

To offer toleration to those gripped by animosity to your way of life is to open the door to destruction. An elaborate lit review, more the history of conservatism.

For the socialist, men are equal in their needs, and should therefore be equal in all that is granted to them for the satisfaction of their needs. For the liberal, they are equal in their rights, and should therefore be equal in all that affects their social and political standing.

To offer toleration to those gripped by animosity to your way of life is to open the door to destruction.

Artists and critics get together in order to take themselves in, the artists posing as the originators of astonishing breakthroughs, the critics posing as the penetrating judges of the true avant-garde.

nacionalismo, como uma ideologia, é perigoso apenas à medida que as ideologias são perigosas. Ocupa o espaço deixado vago pela religião e, ao fazê-lo, estimula o verdadeiro crente a venerar a ideia nacionalista e a buscar nesta concepção aquilo que ela não pode oferecer — o propósito último da vida, o caminho da redenção e o consolo para todas as aflições.

We must inevitably conclude, therefore, that the main influences over Spinoza's thought during his formative years were not those philosophers, such as Descartes, to whom he later devoted his attention, but the Jewish and Muslim writers of earlier centuries, whose thoughts provided the main arguments of contemporary Judaism.

Hence for a long time now it has been assumed that there can be no authentic creation in the sphere of high art which is not in some way a 'challenge' to the complacencies of our public culture. Art must give offence, stepping out of the future fully armed against the bourgeois taste for the conforming and the comfortable, which are simply other names for kitsch and cliché. But the result of this is that offence becomes a cliché.

Philosophy arises, therefore, in two contrasted ways: first, in attempting to complete the 'Why?' of explanation; secondly in attempting to justify the other kinds of 'Why?' — the 'Why?' which looks for a reason, and the 'Why?' which looks for a meaning. Most of the traditional branches of the subject stem from these two attempts, the first of which is hopeless, the second of which is our best source of hope.

how can I know the world as it is? I can have knowledge of the world as it seems, since that is merely knowledge of my present perceptions, memories, thoughts, and feelings. But can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of how it seems? To put the question in slightly more general form: can I have knowledge of the world that is not just knowledge of my own point of view?

All sentimentality is like this: it redirects emotion from the object to the subject, so as to create a fantasy of emotion without the real cost of feeling it.

Political order, in short, requires cultural unity, something that politics itself can never provide.

In figurative painting, in tonal music, in the cliché-ridden poems of heroic love and mythic glory, we find the same disease – the artist is not exploring the human heart but creating a puffed-up substitute, and then putting it on sale.

Observing the volatile nature of the new democracies, I came vividly to see how unimportant a part of democracy are elections, in comparison with the enduring institutions and public spirit that make elected politicians accountable.

The whole point of the concept of culture is to mark out the significant differences between the forms of human life, and the satisfactions that people take in them.

When society is organised from above, either by the top-down government of a revolutionary dictatorship, or by the impersonal edicts of an inscrutable bureaucracy, then accountability rapidly disappears from the political order, and from society, too. Top-down government breeds irresponsible individuals, and the confiscation of civil society by the state leads to a widespread refusal among the citizens to act for themselves.

This is possible only if we retain our trust in negotiation and in the sincere desire, among politicians, to compromise with their opponents. Hence in both Britain and America it is necessary for conservatives to defend the politics of compromise, and to protect all those institutions and customs that give a voice to opposition. This

Unless and until people identify themselves with the country, its territory and its cultural inheritance – in something like the way people identify themselves with a family – the politics of compromise will not emerge.

Beneath every society where self-interest pays off, lies a foundation of self-sacrifice.

Official patronage therefore inevitably favours works that are arcane, excruciating or meaningless over those that have real and lasting appeal.

Something new seems to be at work in the contemporary world - a process that is eating away the very heart of social life, not merely by putting salesmanship in place of moral virtue, but by putting everything - virtue included - on sale.

Over a large range of cases, environmental problems arise from our entirely reasonable habit of taking the benefits of our activities, while passing on the costs. The environment is degraded because we externalize the costs of what we do; and the solution is to find the motives that will return the costs to the one who creates them.

this is to mistake the effect for the cause. In a free economy such ways of making money emerge by an invisible hand from choices made by all of us. It is the demand for cars, oil, cheap food and expendable luxuries that is the real cause of the industries that provide these things. Of

We reach beauty through setting our interests aside and letting the world dawn on us. There are many ways of doing this, but art is undeniably the most important, since it presents us with the image of human life – our own life and all that life means to us – and asks us to look on it directly, not for what we can take from it but for what we can give to it. Through beauty art cleans the world of our self-obsession.