Conservatism, for me, is the philosophy and the politics of attachment. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Political order, in short, requires cultural unity, something that politics itself can never provide.” — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Top-down government breeds irresponsible individuals, and the confiscation of civil society by the state leads to a widespread refusal among the citizens… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
All political order presupposes a pre-political order, a sense that people belong together. And then, of course, they might seek a contract… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The language of politics is spoken in the first-person plural, and for Conservatives, the duty of the politician is to maintain that… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“accountable government does not come through elections. It comes through respect for law, through public spirit and through a culture of confession.… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The Anglo-American tradition of constitutional thinking should be understood in this way, as addressing the question of how to limit the power… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The worst mistake in politics is the mistake made by Lenin – the mistake of destroying the institutions and procedures whereby mistakes… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Robert Conquest once announced three laws of politics, the first of which says that everyone is right-wing in the matters he knows… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
For Conservatives, all disputes over law, liberty and justice are addressed to a historic and existing community. The root of politics, they… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The main aim of conservative politicians is to get through to the next election without being noticed. Nothing is more embarrassing to… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
[Burke] emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The author assumed that the main task of government is to distribute the collective wealth of society among its members, and that,… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Observing the volatile nature of the new democracies, I came vividly to see how unimportant a part of democracy are elections, in… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The welfare state that is built upon this conception seems to prove precisely away from the conservative conception of authoritative and personal… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
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… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“the growing materialism of our societies. This materialism informs political discourse at every level, making wealth and its distribution the only issue… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The long-term effect of this has been to open Western societies to immigration, and to impart an ideal of citizenship that, it… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The leading virtue of conservative politics as I see it is the preference for procedure over ideological programs. Liberals tend to believe… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was “socialism gone wrong.” This… — 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
“Oakeshott believed that civil association has been increasingly displaced by enterprise, under pressure from political elites, managers, parties and ideologues. It is… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“The first is that the conservative cause has been polluted by the ideology of big business, by the global ambitions of the… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
What makes a politician accountable is not that there are millions of people who vote, but that there are procedures of government… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“This is possible only if we retain our trust in negotiation and in the sincere desire, among politicians, to compromise with their… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Unless and until people identify themselves with the country, its territory and its cultural inheritance – in something like the way people… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“Gradually this truth is beginning to dawn on the political class, so that even socialists have come to accept that the poor… — 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
![“[Burke] emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or their modernist equivalents, are actually forms of militant irrationality.” quote by Roger Scruton](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/369/roger-scruton-971_form_burke-emphasized-that-the-new-forms-of-p_2637571.jpg)
