Michael Joseph Oakeshott Quotes
10 quotes
in 239 categories
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Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification…
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Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can…
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In political activity . . . men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place…
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A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in…
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Education is ... the invitation to disentangle oneself, for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now and to listen to the conversation…
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Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.
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To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to…
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This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human…
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The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external…
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History is what the evidence compels us to believe.
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