A Political Philosophy Quotes

“It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into, we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a power-directed system of thought.”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy

“We should distinguish national loyalty from nationalism. National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy

“The recent experience of totalitarianism in Europe was foreshadowed at the French Revolution, when the Committee of Public Safety acted in the same way as the Nazi and Communist parties, setting up 'parallel structures' through which to control the state and to exert a micromanagerial tyranny over every aspect of civil society.

Let us at least be realistic, and recognize that, if totalitarian governments have arisen and spread with such rapidity in modern times, this is because there is something in human nature to which they correspond and on which they draw for their moral energy.”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy

“Symbols of national loyalty are neither militant nor ideological, but consist in peaceful images of the homeland, of the place where we belong. National loyalties, therefore, aid reconciliation between classes, interests, and faiths”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy

“Children of married parents find a place in society already prepared for them, furnished by a regime of parental sacrifice, and protected by social norms. Take away marriage and you expose children to the risk of coming into the world as strangers.”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy

“Conservatism, as I understand it, means the maintenance of the social ecology. Individual freedom is certainly a part of that ecology, since without it social organisms cannot adapt. But freedom is not the sole or the true goal of politics. Conservatism involves the conservation of our shared resources – social, material, economic and spiritual – and resistance to social entropy in all its forms.”
― Roger Scruton, A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism