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Russell Kirk Biography

Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 – April 29, 1994) was an American political theorist, moralist, historian, social critic, and literary critic, known for his influence on 20th-century American conservatism. His 1953 book The Conservative Mind gave shape to the amorphous post–World War II conservative movement. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to the ideas of Edmund Burke. Kirk was considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism. He was also an accomplished author of Gothic and ghost story fiction.

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Russell Kirk Quotes

Rather than ennobling the public mind and cementing the social fabric, applied science speedily became the chief weapon of a gross individualism, which was anathema to the frugal and righteous (John Quincy) Adams, the source of enormous fortunes divorced from duty, the instrument of unscrupulous ambition and rapacious materialism. Presently, it came to scar the very of the country which Adams loved, a disfiguring process uninterrupted since his day.

Ambition, Country, Frugal, Mind, Righteous, Uninterrupted

Principle #6: Recognition that change and reform are not identical, and that innovation is a devouring conflagration more often than it is a torch of progress.

Change, Conflagration, Innovation, Progress, Reform, Torches

The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice). . . the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values.

Agriculture, Christian, Greedy, Illustration, Values, Vast

Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

Desire, Ignorant, Know, Mind, Minds

Why do we not exhaust the heritage of the ages, spiritual and material for our immediate pleasure, and let posterity go hang? So far as simple rationality is concerned, self-interest can advance no argument against the appetite of present possessors. Yet within some of us, a voice that is not the demand of self-interest or pure rationality says that we have no right to give ourselves enjoyment at the expense of our ancestors' memory and our descendants' prospects. We hold our present advantages only in trust.

Hold, Immediate, Memories, Says, Simple, Spiritual

We cannot make a heaven on earth, though we may make a hell.

Earth, Heaven, Hell, Make, May, Though

Every right is married to a duty, every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility.

Responsibility, Conservative, Married, Duty, Owes, Right

The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

Freedom, Justice, Order, Preserve, Thinking, Toward

Every right is married to a duty; every freedom owes a corresponding responsibility; and there cannot be genuine freedom unless there exists also genuine order, in the moral realm and in the social realm.

Genuine, Moral, Order, Owes, Responsibility

Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason.

Ancestral, Arrive, Decision, Intuition, Men, Pure

Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.

Back, Bring, Change, Inspirational, Men

Ordinary human laws are the means - however imperfect - by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.

Express, Law, Mean, Understanding

Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.

Christian, Churches, Grave, Religious, School, Talk

. . . ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.

Ambition, Beautiful, Common, Failure, Men, Obscurity

Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

Civilization, Intellectual, Together, Arms, Civilizations, Principle

And Burke, could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man.

Burke, Century, Concede, Men, Prepared, Suicide

The resources of nature, like those of spirit, are running out, and all that a conscientious man can aspire to be is a literal conservative, hoarding what remains of culture and of natural wealth against the fierce appetites of modern life.

Culture, Fierce, Hoarding, Men, Natural, Running

I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle.

Faith, Love, Loyalty, Numbers, Organization, Sophisters

Common Reader for Everyday Ecologists

Common, Ecologists, Everyday, Reader

Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

Rewards, Privilege, Duty, Duties, Performed

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