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Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify.

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
Chaos
Doctrines
Program
Cosmos
Either
Programs
Emancipating
Force
Appetite
Egalitarian
Order
Fragile
Signify
Real
Significance
Adrift
Revolutionary
Vortex
Doctrine
Reformers

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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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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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Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists
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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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It is good for a student to be poor. Getting and spending, the typical American college student lays waste his powers. Work and contemplation don't mix, and university days ought to be days of contemplation.
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If men are discharged of reverence for ancient usage, they will treat this world, almost certainly, as if it were their private property, to be consumed for their sensual gratification and thus they will destroy in their lust for enjoyment the property of future generations, of their own contemporaries, and indeed their very own capital.
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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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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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The principle of real leadership ignored, the immortal objects of society forgotten, practical conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of private enterprise, economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests.
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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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Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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The good society is marked by a high degree of order, justice, and freedom. Among these, order has primacy: for justice cannot be enforced until a tolerable civil social order is attained, nor can freedom be anything better than violence until order gives us laws.
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The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called the permanent things-the norms of human action.
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Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
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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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...so mankind is now trapped by the failure of its energies and by the depletion of those natural resources that men have plundered wantonly.
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The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .
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