Michael Oakeshott Quotes

#1. A so-called ideal scheme which does not grow out of reality is definitely and finally not ideal at all.

Michael Oakeshott

#2. When Plutarch says that a city might sooner subsist without a geographical site than without belief in the gods, his words would not have appeared strange to his countrymen at any time.']

Michael Oakeshott

#3. Strength we think to be a virtue in government, but we do not find our defense against disintegration either in arbitrary or in very great power. Indeed, we are inclined to see in both these the symptoms of an already advanced decay

Michael Oakeshott

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

Michael Oakeshott

#5. potestas is specific, auctoritas is extendable and can grow.

Michael Oakeshott

#6. An ideal society, properly so-called, can be none other than an actual, present, society taken at its truest and best.

Michael Oakeshott

#7. For there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature, which does not owe the being it has, and the excellence of it, to its neighbours.

Michael Oakeshott

#8. Culture teaches that there is much one does not want to know .

Michael Oakeshott

#9. I have wasted a lot of time living.

Michael Oakeshott

#10. To define a thing is to see it clearly, to see it as distinct from other things and at the same time to see its exact relationship with other things: for a thing is its relations and activities.

Michael Oakeshott

#11. For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

Michael Oakeshott

#12. The rule of law bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault, but it remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised.

Michael Oakeshott

#13. to see a thing completely is to set it in relation with the universe.

Michael Oakeshott

#14. Like Midas, the Rationalist is always in the unfortunate position of not being able to touch anything, without transforming it into an abstraction; he can never get a square meal of experience.

Michael Oakeshott

#15. A child might possibly change his country; a man can only wish that he might change it.

Michael Oakeshott

#16. Image the whole, then execute the parts - Fancy the fabric Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz Ere mortar dab brick!

Michael Oakeshott

#17. Property was thus appall'd / That the self was not the same / Single nature's double name / Neither two nor one was call'd.

Michael Oakeshott

#18. To be educated is to know how much one wishes to know and to have the courage not to be tempted beyond this limit .

Michael Oakeshott

#19. Browning: 'Justinian's Pandects only make precise / What simply sparkled in men's eyes before'.

Michael Oakeshott

#20. In political activity ... men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel.

Michael Oakeshott

#21. There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.' Ruskin

Michael Oakeshott