Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
6 Quotes: Russell Kirk on virtue
6 Quotes: Russell Kirk on virtue
Jan 5, 2025 2:35 PM

This is the second in a series celebrating the work of Russell Kirk in honor of his 100th birthday this October. Read more from the serieshere.

The Acton Institute was fortunate to have Russell Kirk serve in an advisory capacity from the founding of the institute up until the time of his death. Throughout his career, Kirk was a champion of virtues, whichhe defined as “the qualities of full humanity: strength, courage, capacity, worth, manliness, moral excellence,” particularly qualities of “moral goodness: the practice of moral duties and the conformity of life to the moral law; uprightness; rectitude.”

Here are six quotes by Kirk on virtue:

On false virtue: “An arid virtue that is intellectual only must be unreliable at best, and dangerous often. . . . A false, carping, malicious “virtue” is worse than no virtue at all. The urgent need of the United States of America, near the end of the twentieth century, is for a virtue arising from habit and affection, rather than from ideological preaching.

On the ‘old virtues’: “Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light.”

On the diminishment of virtue in America: “ln no previous age have family influence, sound early prejudice, and good early habits been so broken in upon by outside force as in our own time. Moral virtue among the rising generation is mocked by the inanity of television, by pornographic films, by the twentieth-century cult of the ‘peer group.’ By example and precept, until quite recently, grandparents and parents conveyed to young people—or a considerable part of them—some notion of virtue, even if the word itself was not well understood. The decay of family, worked by modern affluence and modern mobility, has mightily diminished all that. As for the influence of the churches—why, more is left of it in the United States than in most countries; but in the typical ‘mainline’ church an amorphous humanitarianism has supplanted the emphasis upon virtue that runs through the Christian tradition.”

On envy and generosity: “Envy is a sour emotion that condemns a person to loneliness. Generosity is an emotion that attracts friends. . . . In the long run, the envious society brings on proletarian tyranny and general poverty. In both the short run and the long run, the generous society encourages political freedom and economic prosperity.”

On spirit and character: “The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.”

On life and love: “What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life petition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love ever can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Google’s memory
Google recently surpassed Time Warner as the world’s top media stock. Google provides services to about 19 million users per day. People go to Google to find things, participate in discussions via online forums, to check and send email, driving directions, and a host of other services. That is a lot of information about a lot of people…where does it all go? Apparently, Google keeps it all! What is the cost of this data collection? How much of our own...
Corporate blogging
The AP passes along this story about the use of blogs by corporations and executives. Some of the good advice includes: “Don’t go toward fake blogs. Don’t launch character blogs. Use a blog for what it’s for, transparency,” said Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at CooperKatz & Co., a New York PR firm. … He and other PR professionals can rattle off blogs gone wrong — usually “fake blogs” that stir up the ire of bloggers by hiding...
Last week
Power corrupts…and upsets babies. Just in case anyone missed (or didn’t miss) my posting last week, I was on vacation following the birth of my first child, a son, on May 30 (Memorial Day). Owen Flynn Ballor 9 lbs., 2 oz. 20.5 inches 5/30/05 10:10 pm ...
The culture’s animating values
A Dove Foundation report released this week shows a link between family-friendly movies and profitability. es away from the Dove report with a sense that the movie industry is beginning to recognize a profit opportunity in producing more morally robust movies,” writes Rev. Robert A. Sirico. Read the full text here. The Dove Foundation report is available here (PDF). ...
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary Spring Banquet
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary’s Spring Banquet. Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, spoke at Calvin Theological Seminary’s Spring Banquet, endorsing the school’s Dutch neo-Calvinist heritage. “Calvin Theological Seminary is an underappreciated asset in the evangelical world. There’s nothing the evangelical world needs more than a bracing dose of Kuyperian theology,” he said. The speech also marked the announcement of the establishment of the Charles W. Colson Presidential Chair at the seminary. Thanks to a major gift from the Richard...
‘Monkey Business’
In the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, the article “Monkey Business,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt examines economist Keith Chen’s research with capuchin monkeys and money. Here’s another case of science, in this case economics, being used to “prove” the continuity between (and therefore equivalency of) humans and animals. The implicit message is that we are really not all that different from our fellow creatures, nor that special. This seems almost absurd, but it’s...
Good question
Edward Southerland wonders, “Does the job description for school administrators require that you leave mon sense at home when you go to work?” One of the reasons he asks the question: In Tennessee, the student giving the valedictory speech started with a joke. “You have given us the minimum required attention span to master any station at any McDonald’s anywhere.” The next line was “Of course, I’m only kidding. Eagleville is a fine institution of higher learning with a superb...
An interview with Karen Woods
The Roundtable on Religion & Social Policy interviewed Acton’s Karen Woods, director of the Center for Effective Compassion (CEC) this week. Woods spoke about the work of the CEC, including the Samaritan Award, and also gave her perspective on the federal Faith-Based and Community Initiative. She says in part, With welfare reform in ’96, and certainly the waivers that preceded that in certain states, there was a change in the way that we looked at social services. Suddenly, work was...
‘God Makes No Mistakes’
‘God Makes No Mistakes’ You may not know it, but Loretta Lynn is a pretty good theologian. She’s so good, in fact, that some contemporary theologians, open theists like Clark Pinnock, for example, could take some lessons in orthodoxy. The lyrics to a song off her most recent record, Van Lear Rose, that illustrates her high view of God. Here are the words to “God Makes No Mistakes”: Why, I’ve heard people say Why is this tree bent Why they...
Live 8: Saving Africa?
Much has been written in recent weeks about Live 8, a series of concerts that will take place on July 6 in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. The name refers not only to the original Live Aid concerts that took place in 1985, but is also a reference to the G8 meetings that will be taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland at the same time as the concerts. G8 organizers are planning for massive protests which have been urged on...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved