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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

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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
Even
Culture
Matters
Good
Often
Judging
Think
Another
Democratic
Thinking
Persons
Taste
Suggestion
People
Person
Listen
Suggestions
Look
Difference
Offended
Matter
Differences
Threatening
Looks
Read
Judge

More quotes by Roger Scruton

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States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be.
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In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
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Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past
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There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure
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Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
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A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
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When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
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In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.
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The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
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The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.
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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
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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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Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.
Roger Scruton
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Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.
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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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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The sexual parts are not only vivid examples of the body's dominion they are also apertures whose damp emissions and ammoniac smells testify to the mysterious putrefaction of the body.
Roger Scruton
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In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.
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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The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
Roger Scruton