"Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light."
"If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself."
Source: Russell Kirk (1986). “The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty”, Univ Pr of Amer
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Russell Kirk
Political Theorist, Author
Russell Kirk was a prominent American conservative thinker known for his influential work 'The Conservative Mind,' which shaped modern conservative thought.
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"If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul."
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"I am a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin."
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"The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest."