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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.

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
Men
Failure
Obscurity
Poverty
Involving
Common
Restraint
Often
Ruin
Beautiful
Reverence
Ends
Ruins
Without
Conservative
Solace
Must
Ambition
Pious

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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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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 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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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
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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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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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Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego in politics it must end in anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and Individualist.
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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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A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
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