Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride.
Russell Kirk Connected to the Carolinas
Source
No citation is recorded for this quotation.
- work
- The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (1953)
- year
- 1953
no citation recorded
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“Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure…” Russell Kirk. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-A45D8B61C2. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/a45d8b61c2
More from Russell Kirk
The mass of mankind, Burke implies, reason hardly at all, in the higher sense, nor ever can: deprived of folk-wisdom and folk-law, which are prejudice and prescription, they can do no more than cheer the demagogue, enrich the charlatan, and submit to the despot.
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