Michael Joseph Oakeshott Quotes & Sayings

Politics I take to be the activity of attending to the general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice have brought together. In this sense, families, clubs, and learned societies have their 'politics'. But the communities in which this manner of activities is pre-eminent are the hereditary co-operative groups, many of them of ancient lineage, all of them aware of a past, a present and a future, which we call states. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

It is certain that most who concentrate upon achievement miss life. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

We consider ourselves to be free because no one in our society is allowed unlimited powerno leader, faction, party or 'class', no majority, no government, church, corporation, trade, or professional association or trade union. The secret of its freedom is that it is composed of a multitude of organisations in the constitution of the best of which is reproduced that diffusion of power which is characteristic of the whole. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Education is ... the invitation to disentangle oneself, for a time, from the urgencies of the here and now and to listen to the conversation in which human beings forever seek to understand themselves. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

It is difficult to thinkof any circumstances where learning may be said to be impossible. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

A recorded past is no more than a bygone present composed of the footprints made by human beings actually going somewhere but not knowing (in any extended sense), and certainly not revealing to us, how, they came to be afoot on these particular journeys. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Every human being is born an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The politics of our society are a conversation in which past, present and future each has a voice; and though one or other of them may on occasion properly prevail none permanently dominates, and on this account we are free. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

For most people, political activity is a secondary activity - that is to say, they have something else to do beside attending to these arrangements. But the activity is one which every member of the group who is not a child nor a lunatic has some part and some responsibility. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

History is what the evidence compels us to believe. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

Political action involves mental vulgarity, not merely because it entails the occurrence and support of those who are mentally vulgar, but because of the simplification of human life implied in even the best of it purposes. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott