Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The individual seeks out the heat of the crowd, in this century, to protect himself against the cold emanating from the corpse of the world.

Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience.

The unbeliever imagines that religion pretends to offer answers, while the believer knows that the only promise it makes is to multiply questions.

The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them.

Truth is in history, but history is not the truth.

History clearly demonstrates that governing is a task that exceeds man's ability.

In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish.The fool is cured by "reason, " "progress, " alcohol, work.

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.

Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.

Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.

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.

Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems.

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.

In a century where the media publish endless stupidities, the cultured man is defined not by what he knows but by what he ignores.

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality.

Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order.

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.

Poetry rescues things by reconciling matter and spirit in the metaphor.

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.