Quotes from Michael Oakeshott

Neither the truth nor the character of history depend, in any way, upon its having some lesson to teach us. And if ever we persuade ourselves that the past has taught us something, we may be certain that it is not the historical past which has been our teacher.

Thoughts of different species take wing and play round one another, responding to each other's movements and provoking one another to fresh exertions. Nobody asks where they have come from or on what authority they are present; nobody cares what will become of them when they have played their part.

The rule of law, properly speaking, is an exercise of authority in which the power of the subjects of that authority to seek and to obtain the satisfaction of their desires is qualified by the obligation to subscribe to certain moral-procedural conditions while leaving them to choose prudentially for themselves the substantive actions and utterances in which to seek such satisfactions.

But a man's identity (or that of a community) is nothing more than an unbroken rehearsal of contingencies, each at the mercy of circumstance and each significant in proportion to its familiarity.

To define a thing is to see it clearly, to see it as distinct from other things and at the same time to see its exact relationship with other things: for a thing is its relations and activities.

a man's identity (or that of a community) is nothing more than an unbroken rehearsal of contingencies, each at the mercy of circumstance and each significant in proportion to its familiarity.

Property was thus appall'd / That the self was not the same / Single nature's double name / Neither two nor one was call'd.

Strength we think to be a virtue in government, but we do not find our defense against disintegration either in arbitrary or in very great power. Indeed, we are inclined to see in both these the symptoms of an already advanced decay

An ideal society, properly so-called, can be none other than an actual, present, society taken at its truest and best.

to see a thing completely is to set it in relation with the universe.

When Plutarch says that a city might sooner subsist without a geographical site than without belief in the gods, his words would not have appeared strange to his countrymen at any time.']

The pursuit of perfection is far too important to be handed over to the control and direction of a set of people who by blood, force or election have acquired the right to call themselves 'governors'.

potestas is specific, auctoritas is extendable and can grow.

To be educated is to know how much one wishes to know and to have the courage not to be tempted beyond this limit .

Culture teaches that there is much one does not want to know .

For history and for science facts are self-evident and are the subject-matter of these studies, but for philosophy they are the most puzzling things imaginable, and when they are really discovered its part is played.

We are acquisitive to the point of greed; ready to drop the bone we have for its reflection magnified in the mirror of the future.

cannot associate with one another without creating a moral relationship.

to think nothing about the opinion of his society (if he be in any sense a member) is to be unconsciously influenced by it.

Even reason is individualized, and becomes merely the reasoning of an individual without power or authority to oblige acceptance by others: to convince a man is not to enjoy a common understanding with him, but to displace his reason by yours.111