Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Ce siècle sombre lentement dans un marécage de sperme et de merde. Lorsqu'il traitera des événements actuels, le futur historien devra enfiler des gants.

Die Idee der "freien Entfaltung der Persönlichkeit" scheint ausgezeichnet, solange man nicht auf Individuen stößt, deren Persönlichkeit sich frei entfaltet hat.

Die Intellektuelle Geschichte Deutschlands lehrt uns, daß der Geist mit Vorliebe in den Seelen weht, die ihre Größe durch ein Leben der eintönigen Routine erkämpfen.

He who accepts the rank which nature assigns him does not turn into the mere absence of what he is not. Even the most modest thing has, in its proper place, immeasurable worth.

To discover the fool there is no better reagent than the word "medieval." He immediately sees red.

Today's conservatives are nothing more than liberals who have been ill-treated by democracy

El progresista sueña en la estabulación científica de la humanidad.

Mehr als eine ideologische Strategie ist die Linke eine Lexikographische Taktik.

History is indeed the history of freedom—not of an essence "Freedom," but of free human acts and their unforeseeable consequences.

The reactionary does not aspire to turn back, but rather to change direction.

The war in the Vendée is the only political conflict that arouses my complete sympathy without troubling my reason.

When economic and social revolutions are not simply ideological pretexts for religious crises, after a few years of disorder everything continues as before.

Nobody is ignorant of the fact that historical events are made up of four factors: necessity, coincidence, spontaneity, freedom. Nevertheless, it is rare to find a historiographical school that does not seek to reduce them to a single factor.

There are two equally erroneous attitudes toward Marxism: disdaining what it teaches, believing what it promises. I understand that Communism which is a protest, but not that which is a hope.

Authority is not delegating men, but procuring values.

Appartengono alla letteratura tutti i libri che si possono leggere due volte.

Es gibt keine universal gültigen Deutungen. Eine religiöse Deutung ist grotesk in einem profanen Kontext, so wie eine profane Deutung grotesk ist in einem religiösen Kontext. Dort sind nur wissenschaftliche Kategorien brauchbar; hier ist alles Zeichen, Symbol, Sakrament. Der Regen ist für den, der anbetet, göttlicher Segen, der auf das Wunder des Weizens fällt.

When the dust raised by the great events of modern history settles, the mediocrity of the protagonists leaves the historian dumbfounded.

Civilizations are mortal" is the greatest comfort for someone alive today.

Among the vices of democracy one must count the impossibility of someone occupying an important position there without it being his ambition.

Modern man accepts any yoke, as long as the hand imposing it is impersonal.

The genius who bemoans and laments himself forgets that he has spared himself the misfortune of mediocrity.

Religion did not arise out of the need to assure social solidarity, nor were cathedrals built to encourage tourism.

The age draws near in which nature, displaced by man, will not survive except in arboretums and museums.