Roger Scruton Quotes

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Roger Scruton

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : February 27, 1944

The rude, raw, 'let it all hang out' freedom of the Californian hippies was in fact the most censorious and oppressive of societies that I have encountered.

Roger Scruton

The world of art, I have suggested, is full of fakes. Fake originality, fake emotion and the fake expertise of the critics - these are all around us and in such abundance that we hardly know where to look for the real thing. Or perhaps there is no real thing?

Roger Scruton

One must recognise what all religious people know, which is that human beings are imperfect and fallen and there's no way in which they alone can surmount the problems which they create.

Roger Scruton

Given the right to - given the opportunity to vote, I voted for Brexit because I've never approved really of the European Union, I never approved of it because of its attempts to confiscate national sovereignty in all the issues that matter.

Roger Scruton

No, I don't think I've ever really favoured English independence. My view is that if the Scots want to be independent then we should aim for the same thing.

Roger Scruton

The Scottish desire for independence is, to some extent, a fabrication. They want to identify themselves as Scots but still to be part of a, to enjoy the subsidy they get from being part of the kingdom.

Roger Scruton

It is scarcely a mark of intellectual profundity to have noticed that our society is big.

Roger Scruton

A lot of the Qur'an is, frankly, cantankerous, vitriolic, man-hating stuff.

Roger Scruton

The conservative is the one who understands his own society from within and loves and defends it.

Roger Scruton

I've always taken the view that works of art are not just things that we enjoy. They can convey truths about the world more vividly and to greater effect than ordinary philosophical prose can because they don't just deal in ideas but show the emotional reality of them.

Roger Scruton

Certainly the multicultural activists in the Labour party and the universities wanted to destroy the old white Anglo-Saxon education system as they saw it, and produce something completely different - with no conception of what that completely different thing would be, of course.

Roger Scruton

If you say something in advance - if you describe a problem as it arises, people always turn on you because they don't want to hear about it. But when it's too late to do anything, they will then turn around and say that you were right. That's human nature.

Roger Scruton

Nothing upset me more than the award of Companion of Honour to Eric Hobsbawm in reward for a lifetime of unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union.

Roger Scruton

What makes a politician accountable is not that there are millions of people who vote, but that there are procedures of government that force him to account for himself.

Roger Scruton

Lives are destroyed by many things. They are destroyed by anti-racism too, as Ray Honeyford's was.

Roger Scruton

I'm a hate figure for a certain kind of half-educated politically correct person.

Roger Scruton

Fashion makes me laugh.

Roger Scruton

On the whole, I rather disapprove of cookbooks, except for the literary ones, like Elizabeth David's.

Roger Scruton

Delia Smith is, actually, my bete noire. I consider her a most pernicious influence.

Roger Scruton

All political order presupposes a pre-political order, a sense that people belong together. And then, of course, they might seek a contract that embodies their togetherness. But the togetherness has to be there.

Roger Scruton