Roger Scruton

“Abstract ideas like equality and liberty have a spurious transparency, and can be used to derive pleasing theorems in the manner of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or John Rawls.”

“Environmental degradation has one cause above all others: the propensity of human beings to take the benefit and leave the costs to someone else, preferably someone far away in space or time, whose protests can be safely ignored.”

“The rude, raw, 'let it all hang out' freedom of the Californian hippies was in fact the most censorious and oppressive of societies that I have encountered.”

“Whether it is a garden gnome, the sound of Bing Crosby launching into 'White Christmas', the blinking innocent eyes of Bambi or the words of Patience Strong, the kitsch phenomenon is there as strong and recognisable as your mother's face. You seldom if ever have the question, whether this is kitsch or not. If you think it might be, then it is.”

“The Scottish desire for independence is, to some extent, a fabrication. They want to identify themselves as Scots but still to be part of a, to enjoy the subsidy they get from being part of the kingdom.”

“I know ideals aren't realities, but they do influence reality - social, legal, political, cultural.”

“One must recognise what all religious people know, which is that human beings are imperfect and fallen and there's no way in which they alone can surmount the problems which they create.”

“The real cure to immigration, obviously, is to make sure that there is prosperity around the world so that people don't have the motive. Not just prosperity, but freedom.”

“My main argument is that environmental destruction comes when people externalise their costs and pass them on to future generations. That is obviously something that large enterprises do and they become large by doing it.”

“When I say there is no such crime as date rape I am saying what is true. There isn't a specific legal category of date rape and I wanted to make that point in order to ensure that people don't use this to obscure the difference between real sexual violence and, you know, things that have gone wrong.”

“For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.”

“Certainly the multicultural activists in the Labour party and the universities wanted to destroy the old white Anglo-Saxon education system as they saw it, and produce something completely different - with no conception of what that completely different thing would be, of course.”

“Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.”

“Conservatism is about freedom, yes. But it is also about the institutions and attitudes that shape the responsible citizen, and ensure that freedom is a benefit to us all. Conservatism is therefore also about the limits to freedom.”

“My father was a man of principle who found his principles confirmed in the unremitting failure which they brought on him.”

“No, I don't think I've ever really favoured English independence. My view is that if the Scots want to be independent then we should aim for the same thing.”

“Like every other viable environmental policy, the search for clean energy begins at home.”

“The traditional family has an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value, and that is the real reason so many conservatives defend it.”

“For two centuries the English countryside has been an icon of national identity and the loved reminder of our island home. Yet the government is bent on littering the hills with wind turbines and the valleys with high speed railways.”

“Cameron's resignation really was the death knell of the Conservative Party as we knew it because that's something a proper Conservative politician cannot do: renounce leadership at the moment when it's needed.”

“Coming close to death you begin to know what life means, and what it means is gratitude.”