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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.

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
Certainly
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Sensual
Generations
Destroy
Gratification
Almost
Conservative
Consumed
Future
Thus
Reverence
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Indeed
Lust
World
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Discharged
Private
Enjoyment
Contemporaries
Property
Treat
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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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If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.
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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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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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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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A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
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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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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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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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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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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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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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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
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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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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
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