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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.

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
Real
Objects
Enterprise
Degenerated
Policy
Principle
Surrendered
Principles
Interests
Conservatism
Special
Conservative
Wholly
Economic
Forgotten
Ignored
Almost
Private
Practicals
Interest
Mere
Immortal
Society
Leadership
Practical

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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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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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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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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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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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Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.
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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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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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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.
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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 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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Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
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The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
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