44 quotes
In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.
Modern Philosophy (1995)
When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.
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.
Modern Culture (2000)
The future of mankind, for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order and allow the future to emerge.
A Political Philosophy (2006)
Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.
A Political Philosophy (2006)
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.
Modern Philosophy (1995)
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
Culture Counts (2007)
The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.
Modern Culture (2000)
Kant's position is extremely subtle — so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
Modern Philosophy (1995)
The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevertheless, few people seem to understand this truth.
Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.
Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but strives to enhance them and pass them on.
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.
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.
In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires—sex in particular, and taste in general—the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.
Culture Counts (2007)
The sexual parts are not only vivid examples of the body's dominion; they are also apertures whose damp emissions and ammoniac smells testify to the mysterious putrefaction of the body.
Sexual Desire (1986)
Traditions are answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.
How to Be a Conservative (2014)
Liberty is not the same thing as equality, and that those who call themselves liberals are far more interested in equalizing than in liberating their fellows.
National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.
England and the Need for Nations (2006)
In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.