Quotes from Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.

History is what the evidence compels us to believe.

Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.

It is certain that most who concentrate upon achievement miss life.

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.

The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.

Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.

The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price.

Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.