Roger Vernon Scruton (born 27 February 1944) is an English philosopher specialising in aesthetics. He has written over thirty books, including Art and Imagination (1974), Sexual Desire (1986), The Aesthetics of Music (1997), A Political Philosophy: Arguments for Conservatism (2006), Beauty (2009), Our Church (2012) and The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought. Scruton has also written two novels; a number of general textbooks on philosophy and culture; and composed two operas.

“By living in a spirit of forgiveness we not only uphold the core value of citizenship but also find the path to social membership that we need. Happiness does not come from the pursuit of pleasure, nor is it guaranteed by freedom, it comes from sacrifice. That is the message of the christian religion and it is the message that is conveyed by all the memorable works of our culture. It is the message that has been lost in the noise of repudiation, but which it seems to me can be heard once again if we devote our energies to retrieving it. And in the christian tradition the primary act of sacrifice is forgiveness. The one who forgives sacrifices vengeance and renounces thereby a part of himself for the sake of another.”

― Roger Scruton