The Uses of Pessimism Quotes

“Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.”
― Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope

“Civilization is always threatened from below, by patterns of belief and emotion that may once have been useful to our ancestors, but that are useful no longer.”
― Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope

“In short, freedom belongs to individuals only by virtue of their membership in the 'we'.”
― Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope

“The dead and the unborn make their presence known through traditions, institutions, and laws.”
― Roger Scruton, The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope