Politics of Prudence Quotes

“In politics we do well to abide by precedent and precept and even prejudice, for the great mysterious incorporation of the human race has acquired a prescriptive wisdom far greater than any man’s petty private rationality.”
― Russell Kirk, Politics of Prudence

“Politics is the preoccupation of the quarter-educated,” George Gissing wrote near the end of the nineteenth century. To that aphorism we may add, near the end of the twentieth century, “Democracy is the preoccupation of the half-aware.” What our age desperately requires is not more mediocrity, but more elevation of spirit, awareness of the eternal source of truth. That failing, order and freedom and justice fall into ruin.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“The modern mind has fallen into the heresy of democracy—that is, the ruinous error vox populi vox dei, that an abstract People are divine, and that truth issues from the ballot-box.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Now in truth our society is not a “capitalist system” at all, but a complex cultural and social arrangement that comprehends religion, morals, prescriptive political institutions, literary culture, a competitive economy, private property, and much more besides. It is not a system designed to secure and advance the interests of great possessors of capital goods unjustly acquired.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Ask not what your age wants,” Brownson said, “but what it needs; not what it will reward, but what, without which, it cannot be saved; and that go and do; and find your reward in the consciousness of having done your duty, and above all in the reflection that you have been accounted to suffer somewhat for mankind.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Worse still, what future have a people whose schooling has enabled them, at best, to ascertain the price of everything—but the value of nothing?”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“You will have gathered that I am disappointed, generally speaking, with the Neoconservative faction. I had hope that they might bring lively imagination into the conservative camp; instead, they have urged conservatives to engage in ideological sloganizing, the death of political imagination.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Second, “Capitalism” is a word popularized by Karl Marx; it implies that the selfish accumulation and enjoyment of capital is the sole purpose of our present society, soon to be overthrown by the proletariat. “Capitalism” is represented as a complete system, moral, intellectual, political, and economic: an ideology has been devised by the greedy capitalists to serve as a false front for this enslaving of the workers of the world. Such is the Marxist argument; and Novak appears to be fulfilling Marx's prophecies by cobbling up just such an ideology.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Sixth, the libertarian fancies that this world is a stage for the ego, with its appetites and self-assertive passions. But the conservative finds himself 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.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Počnite osvjetljavanjem kutka u kojem se nalazite - poboljšavanjem jedne ljudske jedinke, sebe, i pomaganjem svojem bližnjemu. Ne morate biti bogati ili slavni kako biste sudjelovali u iskupljenju vremena: za taj zadatak potrebni su vam samo moralna mašta i pravi razum. Vjerojatno nećete biti nagrađeni bogatstvom ili slavom, nego vječnim trenucima: onim pojavama u vlastitom postojanju kada se, kako T. S. Eliot kaže, vrijeme i bezvremenost presijecaju... Sve ovo stvaranje oko nas je vrt je namijenjen nama pogrešivim ljudima da se o njemu brinemo. Ako možete, posadite cvijeće ili stabla u njemu i iščupajte korov.”
― Russell Kirk, Politics of Prudence

“(Plato discerned that the fundamental impulse within democracies was for every man to do as he might arbitrarily choose to do, without regard for others.)”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“They offer few alternatives to the alleged benefits of the Welfare State, shrugging their shoulders; and the creed of most of them is no better than a latter-day Utilitarianism”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“To begin with unlimited freedom,” Dostoevsky wrote, “is to end with unlimited despotism.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“My argument is this: unless we begin to think of humanizing our American economy, our cities will continue to disintegrate, and the American people increasingly will grow bored and violent.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence

“Roepke was no apologist for an abstraction called “capitalism”—a Marxist term, incidentally, foolishly pinned to themselves by numerous vainglorious champions of economic competition. He knew that the worship of Mammon is damnable.”
― Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence