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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

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
Performed
Duties
Reward
Rewards
Privilege
Duty
Society

More quotes by Russell Kirk

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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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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.
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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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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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...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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The ACLU has been able to harass out of existence public expressions of faith.
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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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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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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
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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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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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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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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.
Russell Kirk
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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
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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.
Russell Kirk
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We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.
Russell Kirk
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Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
Russell Kirk
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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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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.
Russell Kirk
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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.
Russell Kirk