Quote

There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.

Russell Kirk

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Gained
Wisdom
Causes
Lost

More quotes by Russell Kirk

Image
A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
Russell Kirk
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
Russell Kirk
Image
Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
Russell Kirk
Image
Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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
Image
Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
Russell Kirk
Image
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
Image
...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
Russell Kirk
Image
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.
Russell Kirk
Image
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