Michael Oakeshott Quotes & Sayings

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

The process of experiencing is well described by Goethe when he says that our life is made up of our connections with the world about us, and that we must each spin our own web and sit at the centre to catch what we can.[21] The web itself is made up of past experiences, and each new connection with the world about us, in so far as it is fully known and understood, is an addition to that web, and so an added means of experiencing. — Michael Oakeshott

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

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

Now, the disposition to be conservative in respect of politics reflects a quite different view of the activity of governing. The man of this disposition understands it to be the business of a government not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation; to restrain, to deflate, to pacify and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration. — Michael Oakeshott

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

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

to see a thing completely is to set it in relation with the universe. — Michael Oakeshott

potestas is specific, auctoritas is extendable and can grow. — Michael Oakeshott

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

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

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat. — Michael Oakeshott

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

For words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. — Michael Oakeshott

To theorize' means, to see as a whole. The actual is a small part of the whole, or a single aspect of it, which, when taken by itself is, by reason of its incompleteness, both meaningless and comparatively unreal. To see the actual in its wholeness is to see it filled out with all that it implies, supplemented by that which gives it meaning. — Michael Oakeshott

A child might possibly change his country; a man can only wish that he might change it. — Michael Oakeshott

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

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

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

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. — Michael Oakeshott

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

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

I have wasted a lot of time living. — Michael Oakeshott

Culture teaches that there is much one does not want to know . — Michael Oakeshott

When Mr. Lippmann says that the founders of our free institutions were adherents of the philosophy of natural law, and that 'the free political institutions of the Western world were conceived and established' by men who held certain abstract beliefs, he speaks with the shortened perspective of an American way of thinking in which a manner of conducting affairs is inconceivable without an architect and without a premeditated 'dedication to a proposition.' But the fact is that nobody ever 'founded these institutions.' They are the product of innumerable human choices, over long stretches of time, but not of any human design. — Michael Oakeshott

in modern philosophy, the first glimpse of the true view of the conception of 'might is right' as applying to government is to be found in the political writings of Spinoza. Briefly it is this. Government, as such, has a limited sphere of activity. This limitation is self-limitation; and the proper province of government comprehends all that it is able to accomplish. Government may not attempt that which it is unable to achieve; that which it is able to achieve is its true and proper sphere of action. Ask and answer the question, What can government do? and we have solved the problem of what it ought to do, that is, we have defined its limits and discovered its particular nature. Its might is its right. — Michael Oakeshott

This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse
appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves. — Michael Oakeshott

Browning: 'Justinian's Pandects only make precise / What simply sparkled in men's eyes before'. — Michael Oakeshott

For a great state, qua state, is not one which embraces a great population or an extensive territory, but one which achieves a great intensity of social unity. And in this matter we must bear in mind that unity means unity of purpose and will, and not merely unity of action and result. One of the most significant reasons for refusing to attribute an unlimited degree of statehood to those associations which are legally known as states, is that their size is governed by considerations of commerce, mere whim, or by other limited ends, rather than by reference to the good life or the excellence of souls. — Michael Oakeshott