352 Quotes by Roger Scruton

Music, Schopenhauer wrote, is not unconscious arithmetic, as Leibniz had claimed, but unconscious philosophy, since in music the inner essence of the world, which is will, is made directly present to the mind.

Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity – the habit of saying “good morning” to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.

It is to overlook the culture that has focused, down the centuries, on the business of repentance.

Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next.

When, in the works of Lacan, Deleuze and Althusser, the nonsense machine began to crank out its impenetrable sentences, of which nothing could be understood except that they all had “capitalism” as their target, it looked as though Nothing had at last found its voice.

Left-wing politics has discarded the revolutionary paradigm advanced by the New Left, in favour of bureaucratic routines and the institutionalization of the welfare culture. The two goals of liberation and social justice remain in place: but they are promoted by legislation, committees and government commissions empowered to root out the sources of discrimination. Liberation and social justice have been bureaucratized.

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it.

Once we distinguish race and culture, the way is open to acknowledge that not all cultures are equally admirable, and that not all cultures can exist comfortably side by side. To.

Through sacred things we can influence and be influenced by the transcendental.