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In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

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
Half
Recluse
Preoccupation
Britain
Mad
Conservative
Philosophy

More quotes by 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.
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Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
Roger Scruton
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Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.
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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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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.
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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The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage.
Roger Scruton
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The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
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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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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Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
Roger Scruton
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In the attacks on the old ways of doing things on word in particular came into currency. That word was kitsch. Once introduced, the word stuck. Whatever you do, it musn't be kitsch. This became the first precept of the modernist artist in every medium.
Roger Scruton
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Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.
Roger Scruton
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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.
Roger Scruton
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Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.
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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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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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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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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Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.
Roger Scruton