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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.

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
Conservative
Shortsighted
Unscrupulous
Countryside
Degradation
Pollution
Defend

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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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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 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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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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...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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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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...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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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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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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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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The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.
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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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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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Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists
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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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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
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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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