Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've never been an optimist, but that's fine because pessimists have the possibility of being agreeably surprised.
Wonder and awe are the diet of the artist and without them the world would be far less meaningful to us than it is.
America has this wonderful ability to recover from its own mistakes, which is why it's so hugely superior to China.
The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.
Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.
Sometimes the intention is to shock us. But what is shocking first time around is boring and vacuous when repeated.
There are no chords in modernist architecture, only lines - lines that may come to an end, but that achieve no closure
My father was a man of principle who found his principles confirmed in the unremitting failure which they brought on him.
Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.
Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past
The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.
In mathematics and science we solve our problems as well as create them. But in art and philosophy things are not so simple.
Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.
Creativity is not enough... the skill of the true artist is to show the real in the light of the ideal and so transfigure it.
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.
A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'
The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
To live with someone who likes you, and whose judgement you respect, because you love them, does make quite a difference, I find.
We live in an extremely anxious age in which the core of our beliefs has been undermined to a great extent by scientific thinking.
Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.
To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning "what to feel" in the various circumstances that prompt them.
The traditional family has an intrinsic as well as an instrumental value, and that is the real reason so many conservatives defend it.
My little book of stories, 'Souls in the Twiligh,' may have to stand in for all the other things I have wanted to write in my retirement.
Concerning no subject would [George Bernard] Shaw be deterred by the minor accident of total ignorance from penning a definitive opinion.
Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.
My 2018 ended with a hate storm, in response to my appointment as chair of the government's Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.
There is a chapter in 'Gentle Regrets' called 'Coming Home' which is really me expressing my later admiration for my father's public spirit.
If, as many people believe, there is a God, and that God made us in his own image, then of course we are distinct from nature, just as He is.
Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion; But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
I think that, on the whole, risk-taking entrepreneurial characters regard nature as a sort of background that we can use for our own advantage.
Nothing upset me more than the award of Companion of Honour to Eric Hobsbawm in reward for a lifetime of unswerving loyalty to the Soviet Union.
For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.
The Marxist theory of ideology is extremely contentious, not least because it is tied to socio-economic hypotheses that are no longer believable.
Buildings like Penn Station attract our protective instincts not only because of their beauty but because we fear what will come to replace them.
Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use.
One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is it? When did it begin? And why?
I am hostile to the idea that collective solutions have to be made by committees and then imposed top-down. I very much prefer bottom-up solutions.
Conservative voters tend to believe that the 'climate change' agenda has been foisted upon us by an unaccountable lobby of politicised intellectuals.
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.
Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.
It is not enough to be nice; you have to be good. We are attracted by nice people; but only on the assumption that their niceness is a sign of goodness.
Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny.
Conservatives reveal themselves through their care for ordinary human things, and their recognition of the fragility of decency and the need to protect it.
No, I don't think I've ever really favoured English independence. My view is that if the Scots want to be independent then we should aim for the same thing.
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.
I've spent my life arguing for greater respect between men and women and anyone who takes the time to read my books or listen to my lectures will realise this.
What the word conservative means is not putting things back but conserving them. There are things that are threatened and you love them, so you want to keep them.
Faking is a social activity in which people act together to draw a veil over unwanted realities and encourage each other in the exercise of their illusory powers.