Roger Scruton Quotes

In 'Reclaiming Virtue,' I argue that we have had an element missing in moral education. That element is 'affect.' Affect is simply the technical word for feeling or emotion.

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature, this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

The primary goal in the education of children is to teach, and to give the example of, a virtuous life.

True education seeks to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men and women with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love.

Our moral faculties must be placed highest, else they can no more flourish than could a plant growing under the shade and drip of trees.

Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.

For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.

If you do not know the laws of right conduct, you cannot form your character.

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

Morality is not only taught; it is caught.

We ought to esteem it of the greatest importance that the fictions which children first hear should be adapted in the most perfect manner to the promotion of virtue.

Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes practice; and those who are brilliant at being human (what Christians call the saints) are the virtuosi of the moral sphere - the Pavarottis and Maradonas of virtue.

Tutors who make youth learned do not always make them virtuous.

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

Although children are good and well born, vice will blight them if they are not well educated.

Character is the aim of true education; and science, history, and literature are but means used to accomplish this desired end.

Whilst that the childe is young, let him be instructed in vertue and lytterature.

Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character.

It is the business of the teacher ... to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign.