Roger Scruton

“On the whole, I rather disapprove of cookbooks, except for the literary ones, like Elizabeth David's.”

“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.”

“Then there are the fully intentional pleasures, which, although in some way tied up with sensory or perceptual experience, are modes of exploration of the world. Aesthetic pleasures are like this. Aesthetic pleasures are contemplative - they involve studying an object OUTSIDE of the self, to which one is GIVING something (namely, attention and all that flows from it), and not TAKING, as in the pleasure that comes from drugs and drinks. Hence such pleasures are not addictive - there is no pathway to reward that can be short-circuited here, and a serotonin injection is not a cheap way of obtaining the experience of PARISFAL or THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.”

“The main aim of conservative politicians is to get through to the next election without being noticed. Nothing is more embarrassing to them than a person who claims not only to share their beliefs but also to be inclined to put them into practice.”

“The language of politics is spoken in the first-person plural, and for Conservatives, the duty of the politician is to maintain that first-person plural in being.”

“Lives are destroyed by many things. They are destroyed by anti-racism too, as Ray Honeyford's was.”

“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.”

“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.”

“For Conservatives, all disputes over law, liberty and justice are addressed to a historic and existing community. The root of politics, they believe, is attachment - the motive in human beings that binds them to the place, the customs, the history and the people who are theirs.”

“The conservative is the one who understands his own society from within and loves and defends it.”

“But the European Union does not have a concept of national identity. It was set up to abolish that idea, not to abolish German national identity because that was trying to save itself.”

“Of course, it is the case that conservatism as I envisage it distances itself always from abstract conceptions and tries to find the concrete reality.”

“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.”

“When a woman cries date rape what she means is the whole thing went too quickly.”

“I've always loved horses.”

“Look at what left-wing movements were like in the 19th century - they were all about progress, the engineering of the world, the reshaping of nature, and so on. It's only postwar, really, that people on the left have come to see the environment as a critical issue.”

“I've never been an optimist, but that's fine because pessimists have the possibility of being agreeably surprised.”

“Politics is a matter of day-to-day improvisation, and it often seems as though the major parties are guided only by the desire to stay in office and not by any philosophy that might justify their doing so.”

“The Marxist theory of ideology is extremely contentious, not least because it is tied to socio-economic hypotheses that are no longer believable.”

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