When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
Roger ScrutonThe abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
Roger ScrutonIt is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.
Roger ScrutonBeauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.
Roger ScrutonWhen gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment
Roger ScrutonThe conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
Roger Scruton