352 Quotes by Roger Scruton

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime. ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own

The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.

There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last

Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.

Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past

A reactionary is fixed on the past and wanting to return to it; a conservative wishes to adapt what is best in the past to the changing circumstances of the present.

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.