71 Quotes by Russell Kirk

The natural law is an instrument for progress, not a weapon of revolution.

Conservatives respect the wisdom of their ancestors...they are dubious of wholesale alteration. They think society is a spiritual reality, possessing an eternal life but a delicate constitution: it cannot be scrapped and recast as if it were a machine

Any informed conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate intellectual systems to a few pretentious phrases; he prefers to leave that technique to the enthusiasm of radicals.

The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

The first obligation is to Truth, and that a Truth derived from an apprehension of an order more than natural or material. I think that man who will not acknowledge the Author of their being have no sanction for truth Dedication to an abiding Truth and to the spiritual aspirations of humanity excised, the pursuit of power and the gratification of concupiscence are the logical occupations of rational men in a world that is merely human and merely natural.

Rights have become what the political sovereign or ephemeral master decides to dispense and whatever gratifies the undisciplined cravings and desires of the individual.

These men were not servants, but masters; not the agents of community, but seekers after divine love and wisdom. They undertook their work with high consecration. And the academy or the university was a place consecrated to the apprehension of an order more than human and a duty more than mundane.

Global environmentalists have said and written enough to leave no doubt that their goal is to destroy the prosperous economies of the world's richest nations.

In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered.