One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is it? When did it begin? And why?
Roger ScrutonRead
For Conservatives, all disputes over law, liberty and justice are addressed to a historic and existing community. The root of politics, they believe, is attachment - the motive in human beings that binds them to the place, the customs, the history and the people who are theirs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Conservatives prioritize community and tradition in discussions of law and justice.
In this quote, Roger Scruton emphasizes the conservative belief that the foundations of politics are deeply rooted in the ties that connect individuals to their community, traditions, and history. For conservatives, understanding law, liberty, and justice necessitates an appreciation for the unique characteristics of a society and the shared values that unify its members.
Themes
ConservatismCommunityTraditionPoliticsJustice
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a political debate about the role of tradition in contemporary governance.
More from Roger Scruton
All quotes →There are big questions science doesn't answer, such as why is there something rather than nothing? There can't be a scientific answer to that because it's the answer that precedes science.
Roger ScrutonRead
18th century opera is packed with emotion, but contains not a trace of kitsch. Only with the 'thees' and 'thous' of Victorian poetry does the disease begin to grow in our poetic tradition.
Roger ScrutonRead
The robust English view used to be that the correct response to offensive words is to ignore them, or to answer them with a rebuke. If you invoke the law at all, it should be to protect the one who gives the offence, and not the one who takes it. Now, it seems, it is all the other way round.
Roger ScrutonRead
For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.
Roger ScrutonRead
You cannot own a symphony or a novel in the way you can own a Damien Hirst. As a result there are far fewer fake symphonies or fake novels than there are fake works of visual art.
Roger ScrutonRead
Similar quotes
Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family.
Steven PinkerRead
NATO was constructed on the - with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?
Noam ChomskyRead
Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.
Bill MoyersRead
I'm concerned when certain movements or countries have been isolated from the international dialogue because then you have no way of influencing them.
Martti AhtisaariRead
The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.
George WashingtonRead
I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner
Tony BennRead