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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.
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
Near
Suicide
Prepared
Century
Society
Burke
Ends
Concede
Never
Consumption
Would
Providence
More quotes by Russell Kirk
...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
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.
Russell Kirk
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
Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.
Russell Kirk
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.
Russell Kirk
The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .
Russell Kirk
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
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
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
Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
Russell Kirk
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
Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
Russell Kirk
The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
Russell Kirk
A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
Russell Kirk
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Russell Kirk
The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
Russell Kirk
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
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
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.
Russell Kirk
Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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