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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

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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
Book
Books
Theme
Mean
Taken
Aim
Great
Means
Permanent
Eliot
Every
Action
Majors
Norms
Things
Art
Major
Themes
Men
Form
Deeper
Norm
Human
Teach
Literary
Humans
Called
Ethical

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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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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.
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Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
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...only the unscrupulous or shortsighted can defend pollution and degradation of the countryside.
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There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes.
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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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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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A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
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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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Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.
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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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Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.
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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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Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.
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Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.
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The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.
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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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Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.
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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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...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.
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