Roger Scruton Quotes

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Roger Scruton

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : February 27, 1944

A high culture is the self-consciousness of a society. It contains the works of art, literature, scholarship and philosophy that establish a shared frame of reference among educated people.

Roger Scruton

For Conservatives, all disputes over law, liberty and justice are addressed to a historic and existing community. The root of politics, they believe, is attachment - the motive in human beings that binds them to the place, the customs, the history and the people who are theirs.

Roger Scruton

Coming close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.

Roger Scruton

Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.

Roger Scruton

To live with someone who likes you, and whose judgement you respect, because you love them, does make quite a difference, I find.

Roger Scruton

When a woman cries date rape what she means is the whole thing went too quickly.

Roger Scruton

My own view is that left-wing positions largely come about from resentment - I agree with Nietzsche about this - a resentment about the surrounding social order. They have privileges, I don't. Or, I have them and I can't live up to them.

Roger Scruton

Conservatism, for me, is the philosophy and the politics of attachment.

Roger Scruton

A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present.

Roger Scruton

The Marxist theory of ideology is extremely contentious, not least because it is tied to socio-economic hypotheses that are no longer believable.

Roger Scruton

For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.

Roger Scruton

The true face of religion belongs to the re-enchantment of our injured civilization; faith is a way of filling all the spiritual spaces in our damaged world with the vision of a loving God, the God described in the Qur'an as al-Rahman al-Rahim.

Roger Scruton

It's right to flog a dead horse sometimes, when the previous flogging has not annihilated it.

Roger Scruton

Whether it is a garden gnome, the sound of Bing Crosby launching into 'White Christmas', the blinking innocent eyes of Bambi or the words of Patience Strong, the kitsch phenomenon is there as strong and recognisable as your mother's face. You seldom if ever have the question, whether this is kitsch or not. If you think it might be, then it is.

Roger Scruton

When I say there is no such crime as date rape I am saying what is true. There isn't a specific legal category of date rape and I wanted to make that point in order to ensure that people don't use this to obscure the difference between real sexual violence and, you know, things that have gone wrong.

Roger Scruton

My father was a man of principle who found his principles confirmed in the unremitting failure which they brought on him.

Roger Scruton

My life divides into three parts. In the first I was wretched; in the second ill at ease; in the third hunting.

Roger Scruton

Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with leftwing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken.

Roger Scruton

The real cure to immigration, obviously, is to make sure that there is prosperity around the world so that people don't have the motive. Not just prosperity, but freedom.

Roger Scruton

Although homosexuality has been normalised, it is not normal.

Roger Scruton