Roger Scruton Quotes
@Scruton_Quotes
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Quotations from the great legacy of work of English philosopher and Cold War hero Sir Roger Scruton (1944–2020). Please watch Why Beauty Matters (link below).
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Pinned Tweet
"Real freedom, concrete freedom, the freedom that can actually be defined, claimed, and granted, was not the opposite of obedience but its other side. The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy"
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"The strange superstition has arisen in the Western world that we can start all over again, remaking human nature, human society, and the possibilities of happiness; as though the knowledge and experience of our ancestors were now entirely irrelevant"
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"Poland has been many times invaded, thrice partitioned, and continuously oppressed. Yet it has never accepted the right of foreigners to dictate its law, to suppress its religion, or to control its borders. It is a nation conscious of its identity, which has lived on as an idea"
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"We in Britain are entering a dangerous social condition in which the direct expression of opinions that conflict – or merely seem to conflict – with a narrow set of orthodoxies is instantly punished by a band of self-appointed vigilantes"
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"Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience"
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"Communism and fascism and Nazism were all based on idealised systems, on what the world should be ideally, and how it isn't what it should be; and therefore we are entitled to change it radically and take control of it in order to do so, and the immediate result is genocides"
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"Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it"
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"Left-wing people find it very hard to get on with right-wing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with left-wing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken"
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"Communism and fascism and Nazism were all based on idealised systems, on what the world should be ideally, and how it isn't what it should be; and therefore we are entitled to change it radically and take control of it in order to do so, and the immediate result is genocides"
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"The Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on ... what makes us conservatives is a desire to protect those things, and we're up against people who want to destroy them"
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"As the communists realised from the beginning, to control language is to control thought – not actual thought, but the possibilities of thought"
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"The strange superstition has arisen in the Western world that we can start all over again, remaking human nature, human society, and the possibilities of happiness, as though the knowledge and experience of our ancestors were now entirely irrelevant"
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"We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born"
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"As the communists realized from the beginning, to control language is to control thought – not actual thought, but the possibilities of thought"
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"Once we start to celebrate ugliness, then we become ugly too"
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"People on the left have illusions about human nature, and think that they prove their virtue by broadcasting those illusions. Anyone who punctures those illusions is therefore not just a spoilsport, but a threat"
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"Conservatism, I argue, is not a matter of defending global capitalism at all costs, or securing the privileges of the few against the many. It is a matter of defending civil society, maintaining autonomous institutions, and defending the citizen against the abuse of power"
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"As the communists realized from the beginning, to control language is to control thought – not actual thought, but the possibilities of thought"
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"Look back to the two great crimes of our century – nazism and communism – and you will see what happens when a substitute religion bursts upon the world, untempered by belief in God's judgment"
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"Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it" Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands
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"The work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious, and dull"
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"I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as 'gender studies', devoted to it"
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth"
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"I am not an advocate of Enlightenment. On the contrary, I see it as a form of light pollution, which prevents us from seeing the stars"
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"The work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious, and dull"
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"Once people begin to discover that classical buildings are not just more beautiful, less pretentious and less offensive than their modernist rivals, but also more economical, longer lasting and more adaptable to changing human needs, the modernists will be out of a job"
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"The decline of religion has deprived us of sacred things. But it has not deprived us of the need for them. Nor has it deprived us of the acute sense of desecration we feel, when facetious images intrude at the places once occupied by these visitors from the transcendental"
Canterbury Cathedral, where St Thomas Becket was martyred just next to the nave, is hosting a “90s Silent Disco” over two nights Feb. 8-9. 3,000 people expected to take part. Faithful are protesting against the event with prayer vigils outside
@CburyCathedral
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"I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as 'gender studies', devoted to it"
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"Institutions, once destroyed, cannot be recreated. As Wittgenstein said, reviving a tradition is like trying to repair a spider's web with your bare hands"
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"I was brought up to believe that you should never give offence if you can avoid it; the new culture tells us you should always take offence if you can. There are now experts in the art of taking offence, indeed whole academic subjects, such as gender studies, devoted to it"
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"The Left is united by hatred, but we are united by love: love of our country, love of institutions, love of the law, love of family, and so on ... what makes us conservatives is the desire to protect those things, and we're up against people who want to destroy them"
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth" Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
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"The goal of pornography is to de-sacralize the sexual act, to detach it from love and commitment, and to put it on sale as a commodity"
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"Like every primitive religion, Marxism is haunted by imaginary devils. 'Capitalism', 'imperialism', 'deviationism', 'revisionism', 'infantile leftism', 'fascism': everywhere in the path of the Marxist lie dark and inscrutable enemies"
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"I myself have obviously got into an awful lot of trouble through defending Western civilization. It seems a strange feature of our times that the more you're disposed to defend it, the more you are regarded as some kind of narrow-minded bigot" Final speech, September 2019
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"The constitutional monarchy is the light above politics, which shines down on the human bustle from a calmer and more exalted sphere"
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"People on the left have illusions about human nature and think they prove their virtue by broadcasting those illusions. Anyone who punctures those illusions is therefore not just a spoilsport but a threat"
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"We are being cowed into abject conformity around a dubious set of official doctrines, and told to adopt a world view that we cannot examine for fear of being publicly humiliated by the censors"
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"The great artists of the past were aware that human life is full of chaos and suffering. But they had a remedy for this, and the name of that remedy was 'Beauty'. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile"
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"Young people are told at university that they come from nowhere and belong to nothing: that all pre-existing forms of membership are null and void. They are offered a rite of passage into cultural nothingness, since this is the only way to achieve the egalitarian goal"
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"Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources, but strives to enhance them and pass them on"
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth"
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"Societies endure only when they are devoted to future generations, and they collapse like the Roman Empire when the pleasures and fancies of the living usurp the inheritance of those unborn" A Political Philosophy
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"The real reason people are conservatives is that they are attached to the things they love, and want to preserve them from abuse and decay"
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"The goal of pornography is to de-sacralize the sexual act, to detach it from love and commitment, and to put it on sale as a commodity. The continuity of human society can no longer be guaranteed when people see sex in this way" Decencies for Skeptics
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"It is easier to destroy good things in the name of an ideal than to maintain them as a reality"
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"The mob is by nature innocent: it washes its own conscience in a flow of collective indignation, and by joining it you make yourself safe"
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"It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world"
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth and, having done this, to describe the result as a 'politics of truth'" Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
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"Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it" How To Be a Conservative
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth and, having done this, to describe the result as a 'politics of truth'"
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Sir Roger Scruton yesterday after he was knighted by the Prince of Wales during an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London.
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"I was introduced to classical music by teachers who did not waste time criticising my adolescent taste and who made no concessions to my age or temperament. They knew only that they'd received a legacy and with it a duty to pass it on. If they did not do so the legacy would die"
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"Societies endure only when they are devoted to future generations, and they collapse like the Roman Empire when the pleasures and fancies of the living usurp the inheritance of those unborn"
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"A typical Conservative is someone who looks around himself and he finds things that he loves, and he thinks those things are threatened, they're vulnerable, and I've got to protect them"
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"Inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered, For they are the property of others, who are not yet born"
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"Properly used, alcohol is a stimulus to conversation, a solvent of awkwardness, and a reminder that life is a blessing" I Drink Therefore I Am
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"Those who lose respect for their dead have ceased to be trustees of their inheritance. Inevitably, therefore, they lose the sense of obligation to future generations. The web of obligations shrinks to the present tense. Such, for Burke, was the lesson of the French Revolution"
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"Look back to the two great crimes of our century—nazism and communism—and you will see what happens when a substitute religion bursts upon the world, untempered by belief in God's judgment. Never before has such destruction, or such contempt for human life, visited our planet"
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"Architecture that does not respect the past is not respecting the present, because it is not respecting people's primary need from architecture, which is to build a long-standing home" Why Beauty Matters
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"Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter"
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"The decline of religion has deprived us of sacred things. But it has not deprived us of the need for them. Nor has it deprived us of the acute sense of desecration we feel, when facetious images intrude at the places once occupied by these visitors from the transcendental"
2
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"'Populism' is a word used by leftists to describe the emotions of ordinary people, when they do not tend to the left"
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"Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources, but conserves and enhances them. Environmental politics therefore needs to be rescued from the phoney expertise of the scare-mongers and from the top-down manipulation of the activists"
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"Poland has been many times invaded, thrice partitioned, and continuously oppressed. Yet it has never accepted the right of foreigners to dictate its law, to suppress its religion, or to control its borders. It is a nation conscious of its identity, which has lived on as an idea"
7
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"We can trace the disastrous attempt to introduce responsible government into Afghanistan to the idea that democracy and the rule of law are the default conditions of mankind, rather than precious achievements resulting from centuries of discipline and conflict"
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"The strange superstition has arisen in the Western world that we can start all over again, remaking human nature, human society, and the possibilities of happiness, as though the knowledge and experience of our ancestors were now entirely irrelevant"
1
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"I have actually been listening to quite a bit of heavy metal lately, and Metallica, I think, is genuinely talented. Master of Puppets I think has got something genuinely both poetic – violently poetic – and musical. Every now and then something like that stands out"
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"Left-wing people find it very hard to get on with right-wing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with left-wing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken"
14
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"It is a human weakness to believe that you are poor because others are rich, and that you are suffering because they are not. This attitude – called ressentiment by Nietzsche – explains many peculiarities of the modern world, not least the habit of blaming America"
5
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"Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience"
9
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"Burke rejected the liberal idea of the social contract, as a deal agreed among living people. Society, he argued, does not contain the living only; it is an association between the dead, the living, and the unborn" Conservatism: Ideas in Profile
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"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth and, having done this, to describe the result as a 'politics of truth'"
5
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"Ugliness means buildings that are unadaptable, unhealthy and unsightly, and which violate the context in which they are placed. Such buildings destroy the sense of place, undermine the spirit of community and ensure that we are not at home in our world" Living with Beauty report
2
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"Moral questions are settled by thought, not emotion"
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"The new humanities are transparently political, built around an agenda rather than a set of intellectual questions, and designed to indoctrinate, to recruit, and to close the mind"
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"Either you believe in limited government or you don't. And if you do, you must recognise, with John Stuart Mill, that the business of government is not to mend our morals, but to protect our freedoms"
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"Why is it that after a century of socialist disasters, and an intellectual legacy that has been time and again exploded, the left-wing position remains the default position to which thinking people automatically gravitate when called upon for a comprehensive philosophy?"
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– What, if anything, persuaded you away from atheism?
– The dreariness of its defenders.
Interview, British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, Spring 2013
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"I think that human beings are incomplete without a concept of the sacred. They must have a sense that this world in which they live has moments, places, events, people, etcetera, which are in some sense standing outside the ordinary course of events"
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"When politics is dominated by sentimentality, the self takes the centre of the stage, judgment is clouded and all is vague, rushing and apocalyptic"
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"The work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious, and dull. That is one of the lessons of the 20th century. It is also why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring"
5
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"Feminists have sniffed out male pride wherever it has grown and ruthlessly uprooted it. Under their pressure, modern culture has downgraded or rejected such masculine virtues as courage, tenacity, and military prowess in favour of more gentle, more 'socially inclusive' habits"
2
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"If one looks back to the French Revolution, one sees just how easy it is for the doctrine of 'human rights' to become an instrument of the most appalling tyranny. It suffices to do as the Jacobins did – to abolish the judiciary, and replace it by 'people's courts'"
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"Belief in God sustains our ability to be grateful for life, whatever our misfortunes or disadvantages. Take that belief away, and resentment flows unheeded into the vacuum"
5
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"What we look at, listen to, and read affects us in the deepest part of our being. Once we start to celebrate ugliness, then we become ugly, too. Just as art and architecture have uglified themselves, so have our manners, our relationships, and our language become crude"
5
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324
"As Orwell perceived, the first target of every revolution is language. The need is to create a Newspeak that puts power in the place previously occupied by truth and, having done this, to describe the result as a 'politics of truth'" Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
4
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339
"Multiculturalism has always been animated by the left-wing resentment of, and hostility towards, the European inheritance"
4
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303
"Once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned. This has been my experience"
8
85
336
"We must strive to be worthy of an inheritance that we did not create, and to amend it only when we have first understood it. Piety is not confined to the temple and the altar. It is an attitude to life, based in a recognition of our frailty and a respect for the dead"
5
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"The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science"
6
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336
"Either you believe in limited government, or you don't. And if you do, you must recognise, with John Stuart Mill, that the business of government is not to mend our morals, but to protect our freedoms"
7
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312
"Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it" Fools, Frauds and Firebrands
1
121
332
"The work of destruction is quick, easy, and exhilarating; the work of creation is slow, laborious, and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion"
1
89
319
"We who own property, deal in markets, collect salaries, have spouses and children, and live by the ordinary day-to-day morality of neighbourliness, are the people whom Lenin set out to destroy. We are the targets of resentment, and Marxism is the theory of that resentment"
4
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"The problem, it seems to me, extends largely from the invasion of the academic and intellectual world by activist groups who do not take the trouble to learn enough to know what they are up against, but nevertheless define their position in terms of political agendas"
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