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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

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
Moving
Ascends
Upward
Theology
Moves
Ethics
Politics
Interesting

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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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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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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists
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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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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.
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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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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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...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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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
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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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