Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

El gran arte literario está en presentar con plenitud plástica lo inefable.

En los subterráneos del alma, como en los desvanes de las casas viejas, no se encuentran sino ratones muertos entre muebles rotos.

Stupidity is the fuel of revolutions.

Posterity is not going to understand what an achievement mere good sense is in this insane century.

The price for absolute freedom is boundless vulgarity.

In tijden van volledige vrijheid neemt onverschilligheid voor de waarheid zo'n hoge vlucht, dat niemand de moeite neemt om een waarheid te bevestigen of weerleggen.

The society of the future: slavery without masters.

The modern mentality does not conceive that order can be imposed without resorting to police regulations.

Between man and nothingness passes the shadow of God.

Entweder man gehört zur Nachkommenschaft Hegels, oder man gehört zur Nachkommenschaft Schopenhauers. Tertium non datur.

Yesterday we believed that it was sufficient to scorn what man achieves; today we know that we must also scorn what he desires.

Order paralyzes. Disorder convulses. Inscribing an instituted disorder within an all-inclusive order was the miracle of feudalism.

Heinrich Heine: "Wir wollen hier auf Erden schon das Himmelreich errichten." Aber welches denn, Heine? Das sozialistische Paradies, von dem sie in der Konsumgesellschaft träumen, oder die Konsumgesellschaft, von der sie im sozialistischen Paradies träumen.

Die Tyrannei eines Individuums ist dem Despotismus des Gesetzes vorzuziehen, denn der Tyrann ist verwundbar und das Gesetz unkörperlich.

Natural inequalities would make the democrat's life bitter, if slander did not exist.

Der Fortschrittler triumphiert immer und der Reaktionär hat immer recht. Recht haben heißt in der Politik nicht die Szene beherrschen, sondern vom ersten Akt an die Leichen des fünften vorhersagen.

Resistance is futile when everything in the world is conspiring to destroy what we admire. We are always left, however, with an incorruptible soul, so that we might contemplate, judge, and disdain.

Heinrich Heine: "We want to establish the kingdom of heaven here on earth." But which one, Heine? The socialist paradise they dream of in consumer society, or the consumer society they dream of in socialist paradise. — Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

Heinrich Heine: "We want to establish the kingdom of heaven here on earth." But which one, Heine? The socialist paradise they dream of in consumer society, or the consumer society they dream of in socialist paradise.

The democratic historian teaches that the democrat kills only because his victims force him to do so.

False elegance is preferable to genuine vulgarity. The man who dwells in an imaginary palace demands more from himself than the man who is happy with his hovel.

The philosophy of Schopenhauer does not necessarily exclude God. It just does not include Him. God would be the goal of the will therein and the only nourishment that would satisfy it.

Ich wandle in der Finsternis. Doch mich leitet der Duft des Ginsters.

Grave problems never frighten the fool. Those men who are disquieted, for example, by the qualitative deterioration of a society, make him laugh.