Critics From England

"Rationalism in politics, as I have interpreted it, involves an identifiable error, a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge, which amounts to a corruption of the mind. And consequently it is without the power to correct its own short-comings; it has no homeopathic quality; you cannot escape its errors by becoming more sincerely or more profoundly rationalistic."

"The general character and disposition of the Rationalist are, I think, not difficult to identify. At bottom he stands (he always stands) for independence of mind on all occasions, for thought free from obligation to any authority save the authority of 'reason'. His circumstances in the modern world have made him contentious: he is the enemy of authority, of prejudice, of the merely traditional, customary or habitual. His mental attitude is at once sceptical and optimistic: sceptical, because there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his 'reason'; optimistic, because the Rationalist never doubts the power of his 'reason' (when properly applied) to determine the worth of a thing, the truth of an opinion or the propriety of an action."

"Experience to be experience must be reality; truth to be true must be true of reality. Experience, truth and reality are inseparable."

"By a pardonable abridgment of history, the Rationalist character may be seen springing from the exaggeration of Bacon's hopes and the neglect of the scepticism of Descartes; modern Rationalism is what commonplace minds made out of the inspiration of men of discrimination and genius."

"Michael Oakeshott, all things considered, is probably the greatest living philosopher. He is certainly the greatest in the Anglo-Saxon tradition since Burke, or even (the geometrically-minded might claim) since Hobbes. Oakeshott has a foot in both the aforementioned camps. He is a notable Hobbesian, yet his formal "myth" or theoretical system is perhaps best understood as (what he may even have meant it to be) a disposable scaffolding behind which its outward antithesis, a solid Burkean pragmatism, has steadily been taking a shape fit for intellectual habitation. Oakeshott, indeed, has often been likened to Burke (to whom, however, I can recall only two passing references in his works). His practical relevance, accordingly, is considerable. But above all he has created a complete world of imagination, a poetic vision of great scope, depth, and power. It contains, I believe, major, and perplexing, inconsistencies. But he is, nevertheless, a matchlessly civilised mind, to whom one constantly returns for stimulus and invigoration."

"By one road or another, by conviction, by its supposed inevitability, by its alleged success, or even quite unreflectively, almost all politics today have become Rationalist or near-Rationalist."

"Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat."

"To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss."

"Oakeshott's Burkean emphasis on continuity set him at some distance from Margaret Thatcher... Yet there was a convergence between them. Oakeshott insisted that the proper role of the state is not to protect the interests of individuals as such but to ensure that they, and the social groups in which they naturally and freely associate, can pursue their own purposes with a minimum of frustration. In this sense, both favoured a strong state, but one with limited agenda... Mrs Thatcher might seem closer to Hayek than to Oakeshott, who was less concerned than either with market economics and the pursuit of wealth. But where Hayek, in the spirit of classical liberalism, criticised central planning and the omnicompetent state on a global scale, Mrs Thatcher and Oakeshott had more a confined and local scope. The rights and interests that concerned them are the rights enjoyed and the interests pursued by the British people, as a result of along and unique historical process. Oakeshott's contribution to the conservative revival was thus to make its liberalism truly "conservative", to imply a planing of the rough edges from Thatcherism's radical agenda. Rarely are philosophers also architects of politics, but Oakeshott can safely claim his place in postwar political history."

"He was undoubtedly the most intellectual conservative philosopher who has ever existed, and much the most philosophical exponent of conservatism since Burke."

"Oakeshott was not without illusions of his own. He was able to disparage ideology because he believed tradition contained all that was needed for politics; he could not conceive of a situation in which a traditional way of doing politics was no longer possible. Yet that has been the situation in which the Conservative Party has found itself over the past generation."

"Understanding is not such that we either enjoy it or lack it altogether. To be human and to be aware is to encounter only what is in some manner understood. Thus, it may be said that understanding is an unsought condition; we inexorably inhabit a world of intelligibles."

"[H]e was perhaps the most important conservative thinker since Burke."

"Oakeshott calls himself a conservative but it is not easy to determine what kind of conservative he is. We look in vain in Oakeshott’s political writings for a specific political doctrine, and there is nothing there that would help us to decide which side to come down on on any particular political issue. Oakeshott believes that there is such a thing as political philosophy which has got nothing to do with the world of political practice beyond saying that it has nothing to do with the world of political practice. Philosophy and the world are worlds apart."

"Whatever is satisfactory in experience is true, and it is true because it is satisfactory."

"1914 showed the disaster which followed when hundreds of millions of people gave the old responses to the old stimuli. Soldiers, and later civilians, saw that 'Honour', 'Courage', 'Patriotism', as they understood them, led to cruelty, lying, and blood-lust on a scale so gigantic that the foundations of civilisation were threatened."

"A church that exists in the midst of a non-Christian social order is liable to be influenced through assimilation or reaction by the false ideas of the age..The problem is to cast out the infection and to do this with proper humility.To stand aloof is no remedy,but a form of pride."

"Folly is built on pride, on pride and power, And power ends in weariness and duty: Even the hooded eagle cannot soar to heaven ."

"The poet is always concerned with achieving a balance between the inner and the outer world;it is his business to hold in a single thought reality and justice."

"A good work of art reveals something that is in reality.A new metaphor,a new myth,a new type of character,all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name."

"The politician manufactures a language - a vocabulary and a rhetoric - which, if you accept it as wholly adequate, leads inevitably to the answers he wants and to the actions he wants. But the prior question is whether the language is adequate to the facts. And as the poet is concerned with making language do new work and finding out the implications of language, his answer is always : no ."

"Intent on one great love, perfect, Requited and for ever, I missed love's everywhere Small presence, thousand-guised."

"Strangers have crossed the sound, but not the sound of the dark oarsmen Or the golden-haired sons of kings, Strangers whose thought is not formed to the cadence of waves, Rhythm of the sickle, oar and milking pail"

"In rose with petals soft as air I bind for you the tides and fire — the death that lives within the flower, oh, gladly love, for you I bear."

"He has married me with a ring, a ring of bright water Whose ripples spread from the heart of the sea, He has married me with a ring of light, the glitter Broadcast on the swift river."

"Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it."

"Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right."

"When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written."

"Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world."

"I wish that I could save myself constant repetition by printing across the dog's-ear place of these pages the warning, "Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.”"

"Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage."

"The Book of History is the Bible of Irony."

"So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge."

"We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire."

"[It] is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times."

"But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat — it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older — as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast."

"In the sect – fairly large and yet unusually choice – of Austenians or Janites, there would probably be found partisans of the claim to primacy of almost every one of the novels."

"Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare."

"Historians may lie, but History cannot."

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist.But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to."

"The children play At hide and seek About the monument To Speke. And why should the dead Explorer mind Who has nothing to seek And nothing to find?"

"Space is a wind that does not blow On Betelgeuse and time – oh time – is a bird, Whose wings have never stirred The golden avenues of leaves On Betelgeuse."

"He smiled his irresistible smile, but Dora found it highly resistible."

"It must be someone collecting for charity. Respectable women never call the family for any other reason."

"Lucky Australians! They can go on sleeping for another seven hours and stil pass as early risers."

"Singer worth their while must watch it; Always count your dotted crotchet."

"The same people who can deny others everything are famous for refusing themselves nothing."

"It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands."

"Stolen sweets are always sweeter, Stolen kisses much completer, Stolen looks are nice in chapels, Stolen, stolen, be your apples."

"With spots of sunny openings, and with nooks To lie and read in, sloping into brooks."