Roger Scruton Quotes

Quotes about:

• Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.

  Roger Scruton

  Spiritual, Needs, Desert

  17 Copy quote

• Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.

  Roger Scruton

  Home, Joy, Sorrow

  53 Copy quote

• Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Light, Shining

  48 Copy quote

• It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since, as Swift says, it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.

  Roger Scruton

  Philosophy, Believe, Political

  "A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism". Book by Roger Scruton, 2006.

  34 Copy quote

• A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

  Roger Scruton

  Believe, Asking, Truth Is

  Roger Scruton (2012). “Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey”, p.12, A&C Black

  58 Copy quote

• A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

  Roger Scruton

  Risk, Philosopher, Retorts

  31 Copy quote

• Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.

  Roger Scruton

  Our World, Doe, Vanishing

  Roger Scruton (2011). “Beauty: A Very Short Introduction”, p.161, Oxford University Press

  32 Copy quote

• Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety of ways. Yet it is never viewed with indifference: beauty demands to be noticed; it speaks to us directly like the voice of an intimate friend. If there are people who are indifferent to beauty, then it is surely because they do not perceive it.

  Roger Scruton

  Beauty, Voice, People

  Roger Scruton (2011). “Beauty: A Very Short Introduction”, p.11, Oxford University Press

  47 Copy quote

• In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

  Roger Scruton

  Firsts, Moral, Argument

  Roger Scruton (2012). “Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey”, p.42, A&C Black

  39 Copy quote

• The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

  Roger Scruton

  Mind, Evidence

  28 Copy quote

• In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime. ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own

  Roger Scruton

  Loyalty, Attitude, Hands

  51 Copy quote

• When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment

  Roger Scruton

  Gratitude, Rights, Resentment

  28 Copy quote

• Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Survival, Aspect

  32 Copy quote

• It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.

  Roger Scruton

  Nice, People, Assumption

  44 Copy quote

• The two most potent post-war orthodoxies--socialist politics and modernist art--have at least one feature in common: they are bothforms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, War, Men

  35 Copy quote

• State solutions are imposed from above; they are often without corrective devices, and cannot easily be reversed on the proof of failure. Their inflexibility goes hand in hand with their planned and goal-directed nature, and when they fail the efforts of the state are directed not to changing them but to changing people’s belief that they have failed.

  Roger Scruton

  Hands, People, Goal

  34 Copy quote

• All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own.

  Roger Scruton

  Fighting, Destiny, Law

  "Rivers of Blood". BBC Documentary, March 08, 2008.

  29 Copy quote

• Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Made, Cult

  69 Copy quote

• There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last

  Roger Scruton

  Needs, Lasts, Architecture

  65 Copy quote

• Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next

  Roger Scruton

  Doe, Generations, Benefits

  38 Copy quote

• Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.

  Roger Scruton

  Despair, Shields, Causes

  21 Copy quote

• The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.

  Roger Scruton

  Sacrifice, Culture, Demand

  Roger Scruton (2013). “Modern Culture”, p.5, Bloomsbury Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.

  Roger Scruton

  Views, Partnership, Unborn

  9 Copy quote

• We should not value education as a means to prosperity, but prosperity as a means to education. Only then will our priorities be right. For education, unlike prosperity is an end in itself. .. power and influence come through the acquisition of useless knowledge. . . irrelevant subjects bring understanding of the human condition, by forcing the student to stand back from it.

  Roger Scruton

  Education, Mean, Priorities

  31 Copy quote

• When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, Humanity, Shock

  25 Copy quote

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