Roger Scruton Quotes

Solutions and ideas should come from the bottom up, generated by local communities and not mandated from Washington.

All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.

Anarchism means all sort of things to different people, but the traditional anarchists' movements assumed that there'd be a highly organized society, just one organized from below with direct participation and so on.

We have found, in our country, that when people have the right to make decisions as close to home as possible, they usually make the right decisions.

It's an old anarchist dream that people can take care of their own lives.

Anarchism is surprisingly effective in solving actual problems largely because anarchists have thought a lot about solving actual problems on a micro level in ways that other political ideologies don't really feel they have to until after they seize state power.

People have the most control over their affairs at the grass-roots level. Anything that can be fairly and efficiently handled at a grass-roots level should be thus handled, and only delegated to a higher authority when necessary.

I wish to say that we Anarchists have never changed our position. We are Anarchists as of old and still pursue the same ideals.

The moment responsibilities of any community, particularly in economic and social questions, are shifted from any part of the nation to Washington, then that community has subjected itself to a remote bureaucracy.... It has lost ... control of its own destiny.

… in the long run it is always the searching for a more secure guarantee of freedom which is the common factor among anarchists

We need to allow people to bypass government... to look to themselves for solving problems rather than asking the government to do things for them.

Republicans believe that problems are best solved at the level closest to the people and that the nation's strength comes from the diversity of its people, not from an all-powerful central government.

A strong devolved government is vital so that we have proper local decision-making, helping to strengthen the economy and build a more united community.

No more top-down politics with Westminster dictating what's right for every community. We must all be partners in designing a better future for our country.

I think it is time for a radical federalism in this country, where people trust innovation coming from the local level and ramp that up.

Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite social-psychological hypothesis: that forceful, graceful and intelligent behaviour occurs only when there is an uncoerced and direct response to the physical and social environment; that in most human affairs, more harm than good results from compulsion, top-down direction, bureaucratic planning, pre-ordained curricula, jails, conscription, states.

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.

I think one of the beauties so far of the so-called Spirit of Seattle is there aren't any leaders, pop stars, or guru figures that everyone else is falling in line with and following. No [Nelson] Mandela, Havel, or Subcomandante Ski Mask riding in on a white horse and everybody else just wanting to follow them to the promised land. We're stitching it together and doing it ourselves.

If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves.

People are seeking more power in the individual and less in government and institutions; they want more cooperation and less competition.

Now technology gives you a chance to help organize. You don't have to wait for either the inefficiency or the corruption. You don't have to wait for government. You can actually self-organize and build institutions bottom up.

I try to grow my management team as entrepreneurs, make the structure decentralized.

We're a movement of many people who are uniting from the bottom up. We don't have structures, hierarchies, bosses, secretaries... No one gives us orders.

People won't want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain. Our aim should be to give the British people greater control of their lives in all regards.