Quote

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.

Russell Kirk

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
May
Civilization
Fragments
Conflagration
Ideas
Return
Attached
Scorched
Ought
Ashes
Rake
Society
Appetite
Rakes
Understand
Escape
Unchecked
Order
Conservative
Rebuild
Stills
Indeed
Restored
Still
Tradition
Civilizations

More quotes by Russell Kirk

Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
Russell Kirk
Image
Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
Russell Kirk
Image
...so mankind is now trapped by the failure of its energies and by the depletion of those natural resources that men have plundered wantonly.
Russell Kirk
Image
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Russell Kirk
Image
Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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
Image
Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists
Russell Kirk
Image
A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
Russell Kirk
Image
The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
...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
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
Russell Kirk
Image
Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
Russell Kirk