71 Quotes by Russell Kirk

If there were no God the Father, there could be no brotherhood of man.

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding.

Nothing is more conservative than conservation.

And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man.

We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

The aim of any good constitution is to achieve in a society a high degree of political harmony, so that order and justice and freedom may be maintained.