Roger Scruton Quotes

Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.

There is a deep human need for beauty and if you ignore that need in architecture your buildings will not last

Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.

The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.

Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.

It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure

Marriage does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for the benefit of the next

Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.

Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.

A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

When art becomes merely shock value, our sense of humanity is slowly degraded.

When gifts are replaced by rights, so is gratitude replaced by claims. And claims breed resentment

To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning "what to feel" in the various circumstances that prompt them.

The consolation of imaginary things is not imaginary consolation.

Being unpopular is never easy; but being unpopular in a good cause is a shield against despair.

The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.

When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.

Sometimes the intention is to shock us. But what is shocking first time around is boring and vacuous when repeated.

Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world

Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge; and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.

Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.

Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.

The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language.

The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.

Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.

Creativity is not enough... the skill of the true artist is to show the real in the light of the ideal and so transfigure it.

Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification

Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.

Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.

The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.

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

When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.

Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves.

Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.

If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless... nobody wants to be in it.

Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.

Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.

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.

The future of mankind, for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order and allow the future to emerge.

Concerning no subject would [George Bernard] Shaw be deterred by the minor accident of total ignorance from penning a definitive opinion.

Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.

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