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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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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
Society
Unlike
Sanctifies
Common
Ethical
Rites
Culture
Adult
Sanctify
Also
Adults
Togetherness
States
Offers
Rite
Life
Youth
Maintained
Modern
Passage
State
Passages
Upholds

More quotes by 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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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 philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable
Roger Scruton
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Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world
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.
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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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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Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
Roger Scruton
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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.
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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In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
Roger Scruton
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Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement.
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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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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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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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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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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Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.
Roger Scruton
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The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.
Roger Scruton
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In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.
Roger Scruton