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A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.

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
Tension
Claims
Authority
Healthy
Liberty
Government
Maintains

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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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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
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Every right is married to a duty every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility and there cannot be genuine freedom unless there exists also genuine order, in the moral realm and in the social realm.
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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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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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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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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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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 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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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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