"Race is at best an influence on behaviour, not the moral source of it. It is the individual alone who acts, and he alone who should bear the benefits and the burdens of moral judgment. In all questions of right and duty, it is both wicked and nonsensical to refer to a person's race – whether the purpose be to accuse him, or to exonerate him. To do so is to place the crucial attribute of responsibility where it does not belong – with the abstract totality, rather than with the concrete individual. The racist ignores every genuine right and obligation in pursuit of a merely abstract reckoning: he seeks to reward or punish the individual in respect of qualities which are not of his own choosing and for which he can in truth be neither praised nor blamed. It is surely obvious that racism is an evil. Even if it were not obvious from its intrinsic nature, it is obvious from its effects. Millions have died precisely because, in the eyes of the racist, they were already dead, being of "inferior" race, without rights, condemned by their very existence."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandPhilosophers from EnglandUniversity of Cambridge facultyLawyers from EnglandComposers from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
'A socialist evil to rival racism', The Times (28 February 1984), p. 14
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roger_Scruton
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton (27 February 1944 – 12 January 2020) was a British philosopher, who worked as an academic, editor, publisher, barrister, journalist, broadcaster, countryside campaigner, novelist, and composer.
91 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Roger Scruton →
Related Quotes
"Attitudes to death go hand in hand with attitudes to sex. And it is in the sphere of sex that some of the greatest of…"
"It goes without saying that apartheid is offensive. It was adopted, however, as the lesser of two evils. The Afrikane…"
"A developed legal system, with elaborate common law rights, and supported by a system of natural justice, was the mos…"
"Of course, there are those — Sandel, Walzer and Dworkin, for example — who propose "communitarian" ways of thinking, …"
"An international socialism is the stated ideal of most socialists; an international liberalism is the unstated tenden…"
"Schopenhauer argues that the empirical world exists only as a representation: ‘every object, whatever its origin, is,…"
"Schopenhauer was not the only one of Hegel’s opponents to rest his faith in the unsayable. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-18…"
"Yes, I am in favor of censorship, but it has to be conducted by people like me. And that's the difficulty (laughs). I…"
"The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevert…"
"A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political , legal, and customary uniformity over an exten…"