Quotes from Ernst Junger

There are wolves hiding in the gray flock that is - characters who still know what freedom is. Moreover, these wolves are not only strong in themselves; there is also the danger that one fine morning they will transmit their characteristics to the masses, so that the flock turns into a pack. This is a ruler's nightmare.

Why do people who leave nothing unchallenged still make de­mands of their own? They live off the fact that gods, fathers, and poets used to exist. The essence of words has been diluted into empty titles. In the animal kingdom, there are parasites that clandestinely hollow out a caterpillar. Eventually, a mere wasp emerges instead of a butterfly. And that is what those people do with their heri­tage, and with language in particular, as counterfeiters...

Die Nähe der Katze ist gut für den Menschen von ruhiger, betrachtender Lebensart. Dem musischen Menschen leistet die Katze besser Gesellschaft als der Hund. Sie stört die Gedanken, Traüme, Phantasien nicht. Sie ist ihnen sogar günstig durch eine sphinxhafte Ausstrahlung – sie sind dämonenfeindlich. Die Katze hängt nicht an der Person; sie ist treu wie der Hund. Die Katze ist nicht erwähnt in der Bibel.GES. WERKE. Band 11. 422.

Der Mensch der keine Zeit hat, und das ist eines unserer Kennzeichen, kann schwerlich Glück haben. Notwendig verschliessen sich ihm grosse Quellen und Mächte wie die Muse, des Glaubens, der Schönheit in Kunst und Natur. Damit entgeht ihm die Krönung, der Segen der Arbeit, der in Nicht-Arbeit, und die Ergänzung, der Sinn des Wissens, der im Nicht-Wissen liegt.

Unfortunately robots capable of manufacturing robots do not exist. That would be the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle.

Prognoses which have been made contend that our technology will terminate in pure necromancy. If so, everything we now experience would be only a departure and mechanics would become refined to a degree that would no longer require any crude embodiment. Lights, words, yes even thoughts would be sufficient. (1957)

What does Nietzsche say of fighting men? 'You must have as enemies only those whom you hate, but not those whom you despise. You must be proud of your enemy, and then the enemy's success is your success also.

The anarch, as I have expounded elsewhere, is the pendant to the monarch; he is as sovereign as the monarch, and also freer since he does not have to rule.

The anarch nurtures no expectations. He stakes on no one but himself. Basically, people remain pied pipers, whatever melodies they play to introduce themselves. And as for the rats - that is a chapter unto itself.

When two individuals love each other, they become free from the Leviathan, they create space it cannot control. Eros shall always triumph, as the true message of the gods, over all titanic creations.

In this place a mind was at work to negate the image of a free and intact man. It intended to rely on man power in the same way that it had relied on horsepower. It wanted units to be equal and divisable, and for that purpose man had to be destroyed as the horse had already been destroyed.

The hooting of the owl with its tender wing is more familiar to me than the crowing of the cock. I prefer the strings to the woodwinds. Intermission: that is the darkness. The light feels like a vague scratching; it is malaise rather than pain. I am glad to sink back into darkness.

The political trend is always to be observed, partly as a spectacle, partly for one's own safety. The liberal is dissatisfied with regime; the anarch passes through their sequence – as inoffensively as possible – like a suite of rooms. This is the recipe for anyone who cares more about the substance of the world than its shadow – the philosopher, the artist, the believer.

Die Sklaverei lässt sich bedeutend steigern, indem man ihr den Anschein der Freiheit gewährt.

Belief in these solitary men springs from a longing for a fraternity without name, for a deeper spiritual relationship than is possible between human beings.

Die Menschenordnung gleicht dem Kosmos darin, daß sie von Zeit zu Zeiten, um sich von neuem zu gebären, ins Feuer tauchen muß.

Fraternity means that the father no longer sacrifices the sons; instead the brothers kill one another. Wars between nations have been replaced by civil war. The great settling of accounts, first under national 'pretexts,' led to a rapidly escalating world civil war.

It is not that I as an anarch reject authority à tout prix. On the other contrary, I seek it, and that is precisely why I reserve the right to examine it.

Incidentally, I notice that our professors, trying to show off to their students, rant and rail against the state and against law and order, while expecting that same state to punctually pay their salaries, pensions, and family allowances, so that they value at least this kind of law and order. Make a fist with the left hand and open the right hand receptively—that is how one gets through life.

When all institutions have become equivocal or even disreputable, and when open prayers are heard even in churches not for the persecuted but for the persecutors, at this point moral responsibility passes into the hands of individuals, or, more accurately, into the hands of any still unbroken individuals.

Law and custom are becoming the subjects of a new field of learning. The anarch endeavors to judge them ethnographically, historically, and also – I will probably come back to this – morally. The State will be generally satisfied with him; it will scarcely notice him In this respect he bears a certain resemblance to the criminal – say, the master spy – whose gifts are concealed behind a run-of-the-mill occupation.

There are wolves hiding in the gray flock; characters who still know what freedom is. This is a ruler's worst nightmare.

History is the footsteps of free men towards destiny.

These men did not give the impression that they considered the solitude to be a necessary evil of their land. They intimate with it and loved it.