Century Quote by Russell Kirk

“Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society is the end for which Providence has prepared man.”

— Russell Kirk

“And yet, Burke might have countered, once the masses were fated by the laws of political economy to toil in misery, what else was…

— Karl Polanyi

“I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin His creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable; so without help, abandoned, so…

— Daniel Defoe

“What is remarkable in Burke’s first performance,” wrote his great nineteenth-century biographer John Morley, “is his discernment of the important fact that behind the…

— Yuval Levin

“[They] may have for instance taken the view of Edmund Burke, who in the 18th century made the central conservative insight; that a culture…

— Douglas Murray

It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it…

— Victor Hugo

“Surely the greatest mercy granted us by Providence is our ignorance of the future. Imagine if we knew the outcome of our hopes and…

— Robert Harris

“What an inextricable and hopeless mix life would be if we had to manage it! How do the people who do not believe in…

— Pansy

The power, indeed, of every individual is small, and the consequence of his endeavours imperceptible, in a general prospect of the world. Providence has…

— Samuel Johnson

“Men are put into this world, he [the enlightened conservative] realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their…

— Russell Kirk

“He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yet this corporate being, though so insubstantial to our senses, binds, in Burkes words, a man to his country with ties which though light…

— Walter Lippmann