Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Propose solutions? As if the world were not drowning in solutions!

Let us not expect the rebirth of civilization as long as man has not again learnt to feel humiliated when he devotes himself to economic tasks.

La vulgaridad del alma y del cuerpo es el castigo que el ascetismo impone a la sociedad que lo expulsa.

Freedom is the myth of unoccupied, empty, void souls. When nothing guides us, freedom seems an admirable program of action. In truth, freedom does not solve the problem of the lost soul in a universe of pure contingency, but imposes its own directives.

Between animal and man there is no barrier but a palisade of taboos.

The sinister uniformity that threatens us will not be imposed by a doctrine, but by a uniform economic and social conditioning.

The egalitarian passion is a perversion of the critical sense: atrophy of the faculty of discrimination.

That Christianity cures social diseases, as some say, or that, on the contrary, it poisons the society that adopts it, as others assert, are theses that interest the sociologist but are of no interest for a Christian. A convert to Christianity has converted because he believes it is true.

If it is merely a matter of organizing an earthly paradise, curates are more than enough. The devil will do.

Sólo de causas perdidas se puede ser partidario irrestricto.

El Occidente habrá muerto, cuando deje de ser la presencia de Grecia en un alma cristiana.

Modern souls do not even become corrupted; they become rusty.

The growing number of people who consider the modern world "unacceptable" would comfort us, if we did not know that they are captives of the same convictions that made the modern world unacceptable.

Not seeking the truth is a sign of mediocrity; but it is no sign of greatness to find them.

La política sabia es el arte de vigorizar la sociedad y de debilitar el Estado.

In light of the majority of people today, one prefers them to speak hostile of religion

In general, "historical necessity" turns out to be merely a name for human stupidity.

The ancients saw in the historical or mythical hero, in Alexander or in Achilles, the standard of human life. The great man was paradigmatic, his existence exemplary. The patron saint of the democrat, on the other hand, is the vulgar man. The democratic model must be strictly lacking in every admirable quality.

The racist errs by believing that pure races exist, the anti-racist by believing that the ingredients of a beverage are of no importance.

Austeridad, resignación, modestia, según el dogma moderno, son servidumbres ideológicas.

The effect of democratic rhetoric on taste is called disgust.

The individual who lies to himself, just like the society that does not lie to itself, soon rots and dies.

To write for posterity* is not to worry whether they will read us tomorrow. It is to aspire to a certain quality of writing. Even when no one reads us. *Posterity is not the whole of future generations. It is a small group of men with taste, a proper upbringing, and erudition, in each generation.

Nations have two noble modes of existence—ascent or decadence—and one vulgar mode—prosperity.