Alfred > Alfred's Quotes

“Is it a fact that those who believe in a Heavenly Father do so because or partly because their earthly fathers were inadequate? I doubt it. If it is a fact, however, it is of psychological rather than theological interest. It may help us understand theists, but it tells us nothing at all about the truth of their belief; to that it is simply irrelevant.”
― Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil

“The rule that science is the only way to know something is itself unscientific; it cannot be tested. So the claim
that only science can demonstrate truth actually flunks its own test, since it cannot validate itself!”
― Gary R. Habermas, The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus

“…those who deny that some being is ‘contingent’ should be exposed to torments until they concede that it is possible for them not to be tormented.”
― John Duns Scotus

“It is crazy to postulate a trillion (causally unconnected) universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.”
― Richard Swinburne

“However, it is not always true that history is written by the winners. Thucydides and Xenophon are two of our most important ancient historians, and they both wrote from the losing side. Moreover, as Perez Zagorin notes, "A significant part of contemporary German historiography is the work of scholars of a defeated nation seeking to explain how the German people submitted to the Nazi regime and the crimes it”
― Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
― Roger Scruton, How to be a Conservative

“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. Deconstruction deconstructs itself, and disappears up its own behind, leaving only a disembodied smile and a faint smell of sulphur.”
― Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey

“It is an ancient view that truth, goodness, and beauty cannot, in the end, conflict. Maybe the degeneration of beauty into kitsch comes precisely from the postmodern loss of truthfulness, and with it the loss of moral direction.”
― Roger Scruton

“Leftwing people find it very hard to get on with rightwing people, because they believe that they are evil. Whereas I have no problem getting on with leftwing people, because I simply believe that they are mistaken.”
― Roger Scruton

“Human beings, in their settled condition, are animated by oikophilia: the love of the oikos, which means not only the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile.”
― Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative

“I am not an advocate of Enlightenment. On the contrary, I see it as a form of light pollution, which prevents us from seeing the stars.”
― Roger Scruton

“We should reject the view that high culture, as the possession of an elite, is of no use to those who don’t possess it. This is as false as the view that science or higher mathematics are useless to those who don’t understand them. Scientific knowledge exists because a few talented people are prepared to devote their energy to pursuing it. That is what a university is for: and since you cannot pass on difficult knowledge without discriminating between the students who can absorb it and those who cannot, discrimination is a social good. The same is true of high culture. Those able to acquire it will be a minority and the process of cultural transmission will be critically impeded if that teacher must teach Mozart and Lady Gaga side by side to satisfy some egalitarian agenda.”
― Roger Scruton

“Intellectuals are naturally attracted by the idea of a planned society, in the belief that they will be in charge of it.”
― Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left

“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
― Roger Scruton, Beauty

“Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this ‘living down’, which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness.”
― Roger Scruton, Face of God: The Gifford Lectures

“If he had stayed in Slovenia, and Slovenia had stayed Communist, Žižek would not have been the nuisance he has since become. Indeed, if there were no greater reason to regret the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, the release of Žižek on to the world of Western scholarship would perhaps already be a sufficient one.”
― Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left

“... while we are familiar with the adverse effect of drink on an empty stomach, we are now witnessing the far worse effect of drink on an empty mind.”
― Roger Scruton, I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine

“We appreciate beautiful things not for their utility only, but also for what they are in themselves—or more plausibly, for how they appear in themselves.”
― Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created. This is especially true of the good things that come to us as collective assets: peace, freedom, law, civility, public spirit, the security of property and family life, in all of which we depend on the cooperation of others while having no means singlehandedly to obtain it. In respect of such things, the work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull. That is one of the lessons of the twentieth century. It is also one reason why conservatives suffer such a disadvantage when it comes to public opinion. Their position is true but boring, that of their opponents exciting but false.”
― Roger Scruton, How to be a Conservative

“There are philosophers who have repudiated the goal of truth -- Nietzsche, for example, who argued that there are no truths, only interpretations. But you need only ask yourself whether what Nietzsche says is true, to realize how paradoxical it is. (If it is true, then it is false! -- an instance of the so-called 'liar' paradox.) Likewise, the French philosopher Michel Foucault repeatedly argues as though the 'truth' of an epoch has no authority outside of the power-structure that endorses it. There is no trans-historical truth about the human condition. But again, we should ask ourselves whether that last statement is true: for if it is true, it is false. There has arisen among modernist philosophers a certain paradoxism which has served to put them out of communication with those of their contemporaries who are merely modern. 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.”
― Roger Scruton

“Pop pollution has an effect on musical appreciation comparable to pornography on sex. All that is beautiful, special and full of love is replaced by a grinding mechanism. Just as porn addicts lose the capacity for real sexual love, so do pop addicts lose the capacity for genuine musical experience.”
― Roger Scruton

“Conservatism and conservation are two aspects of a single long-term policy, which is that of husbanding resources and ensuring their renewal. These resources include the social capital embodied in laws, customs and institutions; they also include the material capital contained in the environment, and the economic capital contained in a free but law-governed economy. According to this view, the purpose of politics is not to rearrange society in the interests of some over-arching vision or ideal, such as equality, liberty or fraternity. It is to maintain a vigilant resistance to the entropic forces that threaten our social and ecological equilibrium. The goal is to pass on to future generations, and meanwhile to maintain and enhance, the order of which we are the temporary trustees.”
― Roger Scruton, Green Philosophy: How to think seriously about the planet

“Free speech is not the cause of the tensions that are growing around us, but the only possible solution to them.”
― Roger Scruton

“People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“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

“Social traditions exist because they enable a society to reproduce itself. Destroy them heedlessly and you remove the guarantee offered by one generation to the next.”
― Roger Scruton, Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

“Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters.”
― Camille Paglia

“a free economy is an economy run by free beings. And free beings are responsible beings. Economic transactions in a regime of private property depend not only on distinguishing mine from yours, but also on relating me to you. Without accountability, nobody is to be trusted, and without trust the virtues that are attributed to the free economy would not arise. Every”
― Roger Scruton, How to Be a Conservative