The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
A high culture is the self-consciousness of a society. It contains the works of art, literature, scholarship and philosophy that establish a… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“It is to overlook the culture that has focused, down the centuries, on the business of repentance.” — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political , legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The most interesting aspect of this culture of repudiation has been the attack on the central place accorded to reason in human… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“In place of top-down government, Burke made the case for a society shaped from below, by traditions that have grown from our… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“So conceived, the English police force served to emphasize a fundamental truth about the English law, which is that it exists not to control… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
My 2018 ended with a hate storm, in response to my appointment as chair of the government's Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
I've never been an optimist, but that's fine because pessimists have the possibility of being agreeably surprised. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it.… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“I think we can all see the force of the idea that there are certain things that cannot be done to human beings –… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“Western democracies did not create the virtue of citizenship; on the contrary, they grew from it. Nothing is more evident in The Federalist than… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“If one looks back to the French Revolution, one sees just how easy it is for the doctrine of “human rights” to become an… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“I say it was immediately apparent, but it was not apparent to the intellectual class, which has remained largely wedded to the post-war consensus… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
Conservatives hold on to things not only because they are attached to them, but also because they do not see the sense in radical… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
“Academic philosophers in the English speaking world still regard philosophy as Locke defined it in the 17th century, as “the handmaiden of the sciences”:… — Roger Scruton Copy Share
Delia Smith is, actually, my bete noire. I consider her a most pernicious influence. — Roger Scruton Copy Share
