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If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.

Russell Kirk

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Russell Kirk
Age: 75 †
Born: 1918
Born: October 19
Died: 1994
Died: April 19
Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Plymouth
Michigan
Commonwealth
Critics
Individual
Order
Soul
Firsts
First
Moralist

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Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.
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Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.
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Real literature is something much better than a harmless instrument for getting through idle hours. The purpose of great literature is to help us to develop into full human beings.
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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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Some 'separation' zealots would expunge any vestige of religious observance in public schools. Many of the same anti-religious fanatics would like to wipe out of existence all church-related schools, by regulation or taxation, so that universal ignorance of the life of spirit should prevail.
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...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.
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If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilizations escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.
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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
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A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
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The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding.
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Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego in politics it must end in anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and Individualist.
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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
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