Quotes by
Nicolas Gomez Davila |
Nicolás Gómez Dávila, 1913-1994 , Colombian writer
Colombian writer and political thinker. He became known during the last years of his life, particularly through German translations of his works. He was one of the most radical critics of modernity; his work consists almost entirely of aphorisms he called escolios. | 90 quotes | 5,961 visits |
Quotations
| • | The society of the future: slavery without masters. 16 |
| • | Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies. 14 |
| • | Swimming against the current is not stupid, if the waters are flowing toward a waterfall. 14 |
| • | To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more. 12 |
| • | In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know. 12 |
| • | The barbarian either totally mocks or totally worships. Civilization is a smile that discreetly combines sarcasm and respect. 10 |
| • | Modern man does not love, but seeks refuge in love; does not hope, but seeks refuge in hope; does not believe, but seeks refuge in a dogma. 9 |
| • | The criterion of “progress” between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill. 7 |
| • | Whoever says that he “belongs to his time” is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment. 6 |
| • | The modernistic thirst for originality makes the mediocre artist believe that the secret of originality consists simply in being different. 6 |
| • | The modern mentality is the child of human vanity puffed up by commercial advertising. 6 |
| • | “Taste is relative” is the excuse adopted by those eras that have bad taste. 5 |
| • | Individualism is the cradle of vulgarity. 4 |
| • | The object of modern art does not possess inner life; only internal conflicts. 3 |
| • | The word “modern” no longer has an automatic prestige except among fools. 3 |
| • | In general, “historical necessity” turns out to be merely a name for human stupidity. |
| • | Clarity of text is the only clear sign of the maturity of an idea. |
| • | If philosophy does not resolve any scientific problem, science, in its turn, does not resolve any philosophical problem. |
| • | Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth. |
| • | The difference between organic and mechanical in social matters is a moral one: the “organic” is the result of innumerable humble acts; the “mechanical” is the result of one decisive act of arrogance. |
| • | The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who wants to take another person’s goods, but the one who defends his own. |
| • | Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal. |
| • | Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it. |
| • | Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it. |
| • | I distrust every idea that doesn’t seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries. |
| • | The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy. |
| • | Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience. |
| • | Relativism is the explanation of one who is incapable of putting things in order. |
| • | Poetry rescues things by reconciling matter and spirit in the metaphor. |
| • | Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality. |
| • | Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it. |
| • | Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems. |
| • | The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time. |
| • | The taste of the masses is characterized not by their antipathy to the excellent, but by the passivity with which they enjoy equally the good, the mediocre, and the bad. The masses do not have bad taste. They simply do not have taste. |
| • | Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God, another who believes he is a god. |
| • | Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon. |
| • | Wise politics is the art of strengthening society and weakening the State. |
| • | In society just as in the soul, when hierarchies abdicate, the appetites rule. |
| • | Being a reactionary is not about believing in certain solutions, but about having an acute sense of the complexity of the problems. |
| • | The more free a man believes he is, the easier it is to indoctrinate him. |
| • | An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition. It prefers a lie, no matter how idiotic it may be. |
| • | Stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian. |
| • | Rather than humanizing technology, modern man prefers to technify man. |
| • | There is an illiteracy of the soul which no diploma cures. |
| • | The greatest error of our time is not to proclaim that God is dead, but to believe that the devil has died. |
| • | “Finding himself,” for modern man, means dissolving himself in any collective entity. |
| • | Civilizations are the summer noise of insects between two winters. |
| • | Ideas tyrannize the man who has but few. |
| • | It is not just that human trash accumulates in cities, it is that cities turn what accumulates in them into trash. |
| • | Without economic concerns the fool dies from boredom. |
| • | Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. |
| • | Sensuality is a cultural legacy of the ancient world. Societies where the Greco-Roman legacy is being wiped out, or where it does not exist, only know sentimentalism and sexuality. |
| • | Marxism and psychoanalysis have been the two traps of the modern intelligence. |
| • | The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs. |
| • | The cause of democracy’s stupidities is confidence in the anonymous citizen; and the cause of its crimes is the anonymous citizen’s confidence in himself. |
| • | In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish. The fool is cured by “reason,” “progress,” alcohol, work. |
| • | Wisdom consists in being moderate not out of horror of excess, but out of love for the limit. |
| • | In order to escape from this prison, one must learn not to be on good terms with its indisputable comforts. |
| • | The French Revolution has been the highest wave of the Gnostic tide. |
| • | Anguish over the decline of civilization is the affliction of a conservative. The leftist cannot lament the disappearance of something of which he is ignorant. |
| • | An American historian cannot write history without lamenting that Providence did not consult him beforehand. |
| • | Leveling is the barbaric replacement of order. |
| • | The Romantic love adds to history its third dimension. |
| • | Paganism is the other Old Testament of the Church. |
| • | Man knows what he destroys only after destroying it. |
| • | The mystery turns to dust if unskillful hands unroll the papyrus. |
| • | When we are told today that someone has no personality, we know that it is a simple, righteous, honest person. |
| • | The uncertainty is the climate of the soul. |
| • | Only the ancient literature can cure modern itches. |
| • | Civilization is an insufficiently protected camp surrounded by insubordinate tribes. |
| • | In unremarkable texts we soon trip on phrases that penetrate into us, as if a sword has thrust up to its hilt inside us. |
| • | Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny. |
| • | The increasing disintegration of the person can be measured by comparing the expression “amorous adventure,” which was in style in the 18th century, with the expression “sexual experience,” which is used in the 20th century. |
| • | Reading is an unbeatable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls. |
| • | Universal suffering in the end does not recognize any of the individual’s rights except the “right” to be alternately oppressor or oppressed. |
| • | The contemporary anthropologist, under progressives’ severe gaze, skips quickly over ethnic differences like over hot coals. |
| • | The wheel of fortune is a better analogy for history than the “evolution of humanity”. |
| • | Intelligence consists not in handling intelligent ideas, but in handling any idea intelligently. |
| • | One of the worst intellectual disasters is found in the appropriation of scientific concepts and vocabulary by mediocre intelligences. |
| • | It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the rest of the animals. |
| • | The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality. |
| • | Man emerges from the beast when he orders his instincts hierarchically. |
| • | The ineptitude and folly of the bishops’ and popes’ chatter would annoy us, if we old Catholics had not fortunately learned as little children to sleep during the sermon. |
| • | It has become a habit to declare our rights in order to neglect our duties. |
| • | The folly of an old man has the illusion of being wisdom; of an adult, experience; and of a young man, genius. |
| • | Every solution seems irrelevant to anyone who doesn’t understand the problem. |
| • | To think like everybody else is a recipe for prosperity and stupidity. |
| • | Science enriches the mind. Literature enriches the personality. |
| • | Optimism is never an expectation for improvement; it is hope for a miracle. |
| • | If someone aims too high, most people will not understand when he succeeds. |
