To people like me, educated in post-war Britain, free speech has been a firm premise of the British way of life. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Faking is a social activity in which people act together to draw a veil over unwanted realities and encourage each other in… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
If, as many people believe, there is a God, and that God made us in his own image, then of course we… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
I do ask myself why I make people so enraged, because I only ever say what I think. And while I know… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
In the traditional dances, physical contact was permitted in a way that it wasn't in everyday life. The electricity of physical contact… — 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
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
The sanctity of private property is so fundamental a part of the American settlement that the country's conservatives look with suspicion on… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Look at what left-wing movements were like in the 19th century - they were all about progress, the engineering of the world,… — 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
Beauty can be consoling, disturbing, sacred, profane; it can be exhilarating, appealing, inspiring, chilling. It can affect us in an unlimited variety… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
State solutions are imposed from above; they are often without corrective devices, and cannot easily be reversed on the proof of failure.… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm-a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be… — 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
It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the… — 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
If you're going to have a free economy, one in which the ordinary citizen can dispose of his own income, you're going… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between… — 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
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
I've never been an optimist, but that's fine because pessimists have the possibility of being agreeably surprised. — 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 produce it.… — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded. — Roger Scruton Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
