We consider ourselves to be free because no one in our society is allowed unlimited powerno leader, faction, party or 'class', no majority, no govern…

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this s…

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The politics of our society are a conversation in which past, present and future each has a voice; and though one or other of them may on occasion pr…

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-…

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Education is ... the invitation to disentangle oneself, for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now and to listen to the conversation in which…

- Michael Joseph Oakeshott