Michael Oakeshott > Quotes

“To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott, On history and other essays

“Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“In political activity . . . men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy, and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse -- appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“Now, the disposition to be conservative in respect of politics reflects a quite different view of the activity of governing. The man of this disposition understands it to be the business of a government not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation; to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“I have wasted a lot of time living.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“So far from a political ideology being the quasi-divine parent of political activity, it turns out to be its earthly stepchild. Instead of an independently premeditated scheme of ends to be pursued, it is a system of ideas abstracted from the manner in which people have been accustomed to go about the business of attending to the arrangements of their societies. The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but of meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, political activity comes first and a political ideology follows after; and the understanding of politics we are investigating has the disadvantage of being, in the strict sense, preposterous.
Let us consider the matter first in relation to scientific hypothesis, which I have taken to play a role in scientific activity in some respects similar to that of an ideology in politics. If a scientific hypothesis were a self-generated bright idea which owed nothing to scientific activity, then empiricism governed by hypothesis could be considered to compose a self-contained manner of activity; but this certainly is not its character. The truth is that only a man who is already a scientist can formulate a scientific hypothesis; that is, an hypothesis is not an independent invention capable of guiding scientific inquiry, but a dependent supposition which arises as an abstraction from within already existing scientific activity. Moreover, even when the specific hypothesis has in this manner been formulated, it is inoperative as a guide to research without constant reference to the traditions of scientific inquiry from which it was abstracted. The concrete situation does not appear until the specific hypothesis, which is the occasion of empiricism being set to work, is recognized as itself the creature of owing how to conduct a scientific inquiry.
Or consider the example of cookery. It might be supposed that an ignorant man, some edible materials, and a cookery book compose together the necessities of a self-moved (or concrete) activity called cooking. But nothing is further from the truth. The cookery book is not an independently generated beginning from which cooking can spring; it is nothing more than an abstract of somebody's knowledge of how to cook: it is the stepchild, not the parent of the activity. The book, in its tum, may help to set a man on to dressing a dinner, but if it were his sole guide he could never, in fact, begin: the book speaks only to those who know already the kind of thing to expect from it and consequently bow to interpret it.
Now, just as a cookery book presupposes somebody who knows how to cook, and its use presupposes somebody who already knows how to use it, and just as a scientific hypothesis springs from a knowledge of how to conduct a scientific investigation and separated from that knowledge is powerless to set empiricism profitably to work, so a political ideology must be understood, not as an independently premeditated beginning for political activity, but as knowledge (abstract and generalized) of a concrete manner of attending to the arrangements of a society. The catechism which sets out the purposes to be pursued merely abridges a concrete manner of behaviour in which those purposes are already hidden. It does not exist in advance of political activity, and by itself it is always an insufficient guide. Political enterprises, the ends to be pursued, the arrangements to be established (all the normal ingredients of a political ideology), cannot be premeditated in advance of a manner of attending to the arrangements of a society; what we do, and moreover what we want to do, is the creature of how we are accustomed to conduct our affairs. Indeed, it often reflects no more than a dis­covered ability to do something which is then translated into an authority to do it.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“A so-called ideal scheme which does not grow out of reality is definitely and finally not ideal at all.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that ‘the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established’ by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated ‘dedication to a proposition.’ But the fact is that nobody ever ‘founded these institutions.’ They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design.”
― Michael Joseph Oakeshott

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.’ Ruskin”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“Education is not acquiring a stock of ready-made ideas, images, sentiments, beliefs and so forth; it is learning to look, to listen, to think, to feel, to imagine, to believe, to understand, to choose and to wish.”
― Michael Oakeshott, VOICE OF LIBERAL LEARNING, THE

“For a great state, qua state, is not one which embraces a great population or an extensive territory, but one which achieves a great intensity of social unity. And in this matter we must bear in mind that unity means unity of purpose and will, and not merely unity of action and result. One of the most significant reasons for refusing to attribute an unlimited degree of statehood to those associations which are legally known as states, is that their size is governed by considerations of commerce, mere whim, or by other limited ends, rather than by reference to the good life or the excellence of souls.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“the first rule of Moritz Haupt for interpreting the classics,—‘Man soll nicht übersetzen.’ [‘Do not translate’:”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“To theorize’ means, to see as a whole. The actual is a small part of the whole, or a single aspect of it, which, when taken by itself is, by reason of its incompleteness, both meaningless and comparatively unreal. To see the actual in its wholeness is to see it filled out with all that it implies, supplemented by that which gives it meaning.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in the process of learning.”
― Michael Oakeshott

“The real, if it is anything, is a coherent whole, it is a unity so unified as to preclude the possibility of disunity. And this is what we have called the truth. The real thing is the thing as it truly exists. The true thing, the thing as it exists in its wholeness, is the real thing.[26] And how does this differ from what we have called the ideal? In no respect whatever. The word Hegel uses for ‘wholeness’ is ‘reasonableness’, and if we are content to understand it (and not to abuse it) his assertion that was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig, is not so wide of the mark.[27] Thought out to the end, as we have tried to do, the ideal not only grows out of the real, not only is contained in the real, but is the real.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“a child might possibly change his country; a man can only wish that he might change it.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“The conduct of affairs, for the Rationalist, is a matter of solving problems, and in this no man can hope to be successful whose reason has become inflexible by surrender to habit or is clouded by the fumes of tradition. In this activity the character which the Rationalist claims for himself is the character of the engineer, whose mind (it is supposed) is controlled throughout by appropriate technique and whose first step is to dismiss from his attention everything not directly related to his specific intentions. The assimilation of politics to engineering is, indeed, what may be called the myth of rationalist politics. And it is, of course, a recurring theme in the literature of Rationalism. The politics it inspires may be called the politics of the felt need; for the Rationalist, politics are always charged with the feeling of the moment. He waits upon circumstance to provide him with his problems, but rejects its aid in their solution. That anything should be allowed to stand between a society and the satisfaction of the felt needs of each moment in its history must appear to the Rationalist a piece of mysticism and nonsense. And his politics are, in fact, the rational solution of those practical conundrums which the recognition of the sovereignty of the felt need perpetually creates in the life of a society. Thus, political life is resolved into a succession of crises, each to be surmounted by the application of "reason." Each generation, indeed, each administration, should see unrolled before it the blank sheet of infinite possibility. And if by chance this tablula vasa has been defaced by the irrational scribblings of tradition-ridden ancestors, then the first task of the Rationalist must be to scrub it clean; as Voltaire remarked, the only way to have good laws is to burn all existing laws and start afresh.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and other essays

“England in August 1914 was more of a state than she was during the great industrial strikes of 1911–1912.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“cannot associate with one another without creating a moral relationship.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“For there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature, which does not owe the being it has, and the excellence of it, to its neighbours.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“Browning: ‘Justinian’s Pandects only make precise / What simply sparkled in men’s eyes before’.”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“We remember the Spartan ambassador who, being asked in whose name he had come, replied: ‘In the name of the State, if I succeed; if I fail, in my own.’ [See Plutarch, ‘Lycurgus’, Lives, tr. J. Langhorne and W. Langhorne (London: Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, nd [1898]), pp. 40–1:”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)

“Image the whole, then execute the parts— Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz Ere mortar dab brick!”
― Michael Oakeshott, Early Political Writings 1925-30: A discussion of some matters preliminary to the study of political philosophy' and 'The philosophical approach to ... Oakeshott Selected Writings Book 5)