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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.

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
Heaven
Cannot
Earth
May
Make
Hell
Though

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Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists
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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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...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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And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man.
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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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Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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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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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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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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Principle #6: Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.
Russell Kirk
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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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Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
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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 Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .
Russell Kirk
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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.
Russell Kirk
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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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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
Russell Kirk
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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Russell Kirk
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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
Russell Kirk