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Roger Scruton Quotes - Page 4

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Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.

Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.

Roger Scruton
Judgement, Style, Details

This "knowing what to do"... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who "knows what to do" is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.

Roger Scruton
Hands, Knowing, Purpose
Roger Scruton (2007). “Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged”, p.35, Encounter Books

Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion; But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.

Roger Scruton
Beauty, Clouds, Fleeting

The pageant of a former hour, Is Beauty in the Grave.

Roger Scruton
Beauty, Hours, Pageant

In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.

Roger Scruton
Religious, Art, Redemption

Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move.

Roger Scruton
Moving, Wine, Games
Roger Scruton (2013). “I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine”, p.22, Bloomsbury Publishing

A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable

Roger Scruton
Philosophy, Believe, Doubt
Roger Scruton (2016). “Philosophy: Principles and Problems”, p.9, Bloomsbury Publishing

In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.

Roger Scruton
Sex, People, Desire
Roger Scruton (2007). “Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged”, p.106, Encounter Books

In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

Roger Scruton
Philosophy, Mad, Half
Roger Scruton (2009). “The Roger Scruton Reader”, p.8, A&C Black

In the attacks on the old ways of doing things on word in particular came into currency. That word was "kitsch." Once introduced, the word stuck. Whatever you do, it musn't be kitsch. This became the first precept of the modernist artist in every medium.

Roger Scruton
Artist, Kitsch, Way

The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.

Roger Scruton
Philosophy, Might, Problem
Roger Scruton (1982). “From Descartes to Wittgenstein: a short history of modern philosophy”, Harpercollins

There is a sort of mystery to kitsch. When did it begin? If it is just simply another name for faking emotions, it ought to have been a permanent part of the human condition.

Roger Scruton
Names, Kitsch, Emotion

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