Roger Scruton said this quote

“ The heretic is the one who speaks against the community from a place within its territory. He is the enemy within. The heathen, by contrast, is safely behind the walls, excluded by his own invincible arrogance. ”

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Ideological opinion is not merely distinct from knowledge but the enemy of knowledge.

~ Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton Ideology Knowledge

Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.

~ Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton Academy Believe Darkness Debate Equal Falsehood Feel Feeling Freedom Heart Light Meaning Nonsense Optimism Optimists Plan Plans Public Reason Scheme Schemes Truth Unreason Vitality

The two goals of liberation and social justice are not obviously compatible, any more than were the liberty and equality advocated at the French Revolution. If liberation involves the liberation of individual potential, how do we stop the ambitious, the energetic, the intelligent, the good-looking and the strong from getting ahead, and what should we allow ourselves by way of constraining them?

~ Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton Left Wing Politics

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.

~ Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton Aesthetics Beauty Contemplation Pleasure Study