"Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light."
"True conformity to the dictates of nature requires reverence for the past and solicitude for the future. 'Nature' is not simply the sensation of the passing moment; it is eternal, though we evanescent men experience only a fragment of it. We have no right to imperil the happiness of posterity by impudently tinkering with the heritage of humanity."
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Source: Russell Kirk (2001). “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot”, p.57, Regnery Publishing
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