Michael Oakeshott Quote

The generation of rationalist politics is by political inexperience out of political opportunity. These conditions have often existed together in European societies; they did so in the ancient world, and that world at times suffered the effects of their union. But the particular quality of Rationalism in modem politics derives from the circumstance that the modem world succeeded in inventing so plausible a method of covering up lack of political education that even those who suffered from that lack were often left ignorant that they lacked anything.

Rationalism in Politics and other essays (1962) - Rationalism in Politics (1947)