Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Man tends to exercise all his powers. The impossible seems to him the only legitimate limit. A civilized man, however, is one who for various reasons refuses to do everything he can.

Totalitarian society is the common name for the social species whose scientific name is industrial society. The embryo today allows us to foresee the adult animal's deformity.

Sociological categories authorize us to move about in society without paying attention to each man's irreplaceable individuality. Sociology is the ideology of our indifference toward our neighbor.

Nichts was irgendeinem Wesen in irgendeiner Situation grundsätzlich möglich ist, ist von grundsätzlicher Bedeutung.

Die Hinrichtung Ludwigs XVI. ist weniger der politischen Geschichte Frankreichs zuzuordnen als der religiösen Geschichte des Abendlandes. Die Königsmorde besiegelten einen neuen Bund im Blute frevlerischer Opferung.

Physiology on one side, sociology on another, signed the partition of psychology. Personal life has been abolished, like the Polish Sejm.

No hay tontería en que el hombre moderno no sea capaz de creer, siempre que eluda creer en Cristo

The most convinced reactionary is the repentant revolutionary, that is to say: the man who has known the reality of the problems and has discovered the falseness of the solutions.

Neither a declaration of human rights, nor the proclamation of a constitution, nor an appeal to natural law, protects against the arbitrary power of the state. The only barrier to despotism is customary law.

In order to avoid a manly confrontation with nothingness, man erects altars to progress.

Having promulgated the dogma of original innocence, liberalism concludes that the man guilty of the crime is not the envious murderer but the victim who aroused his envy.

No sentir la putrefacción del mundo moderno es indicio de contagio

In order to transform the idea of the "social contract" into an eminently democratic thesis, one needs the sophism of suffrage. Where one supposes, in effect, that the majority is equivalent to the totality, the idea of consensus is twisted into totalitarian coercion.

Da nicht einmal das Böse auf Erden rein ist, hat jede der drei demokratischen Wellen dem Menschen eine klarere Vorstellung gebracht: Die erste die von der Seele, die zweite die vom transzendenten Gott, die dritte die von der Geschichte: Platonismus, alexandrinische Theologie, Romantik.

No es en el descampado del mundo en donde el hombre muere de frío, es en el palacio de conceptos que el intelecto levanta.

El suicidio más acostumbrado en nuestro tiempo es pegarse un balazo en el alma.

With the appearance of "rational" relations among individuals the process of a society's decay begins.

El psicólogo habita los suburbios del alma, como el sociólogo la periferia de la sociedad.

Totalitarismus" ist die empirische Realität des "Gemeinwillens" (Volonté générale)

Modernism ingeniously finds a way not to present its theology directly, but rather through profane notions that imply it. It avoids announcing to man his divinity, but proposes goals that only a god could reach, or rather proclaims that the essence of man has rights which assume he is divine.

The true religion is monastic, ascetic, authoritarian, hierarchical.

La condición suficiente y necesaria del despotismo es la desaparición de toda especie de autoridad social no conferida por el Estado.

Alle Welt ist heute links. Welche Erleichterung!

The "ivory tower" has a bad reputation only among the inhabitants of intellectual hovels.