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When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment

Roger Scruton

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Roger Scruton
Age: 75 †
Born: 1944
Born: February 27
Died: 2020
Died: January 12
Aesthetician
Composer
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Roger Vernon Scruton
Professor Sir Roger Vernon Scruton
Resentment
Replaced
Gifts
Claims
Gratitude
Rights
Breed

More quotes by Roger Scruton

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In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.
Roger Scruton
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Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
Roger Scruton
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The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.
Roger Scruton
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A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable
Roger Scruton
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Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.
Roger Scruton
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There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last
Roger Scruton
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A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'
Roger Scruton
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If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless... nobody wants to be in it.
Roger Scruton
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To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning what to feel in the various circumstances that prompt them.
Roger Scruton
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Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past
Roger Scruton
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In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.
Roger Scruton
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Were we to aim in every case at the kind of supreme beauty exemplified by Sta Maria della Salute, we should end with aesthetic overload. The clamorous masterpieces, jostling for attention side by side, would lose their distinctiveness, and the beauty of each of them would be at war with the beauty of the rest.
Roger Scruton
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When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
Roger Scruton
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The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
Roger Scruton
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This knowing what to do... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who knows what to do is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.
Roger Scruton
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Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying good morning to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.
Roger Scruton
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Freedom can reside only in a point of view, a way of looking upon the system of necessity.Surely this is the one freedom that we may attain to: not to be released from physical reality, but to understand reality and ourselves as part of it, and so be reconciled to what we are.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
Roger Scruton
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In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to.
Roger Scruton