Quotes from Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Between the anarchy of instincts and the tyranny of norms there extends the fleeting and pure territory of human perfection.

What is called progress are preparations for a catastrophe.

Modern man denies himself every metaphysical dimension and considers himself a mere object of science. But he screams when they exterminate him as such.

After seeing work exploit and demolish the world, laziness seems like the mother of the virtues.

Quisiéramos no acariciar el cuerpo que amamos, sino ser la caricia.

The pure reactionary is not a dreamer of abolished pasts, but a hunter of sacred shades on the eternal hills... The reactionary does not aspire to turn back, but rather to change direction. The past that he admires is not a goal but an exemplification of his dreams.

Colonialism's true crime was to turn the great Asiatic peoples into the outskirts of the West.

An ethics that does not command us to renounce is a crime against the dignity to which we should aspire and against the happiness which we can obtain.

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

Wir sollten uns nur den Dingen widmen, die bei einem Zusammenbruch unversehrt bleiben würden.

Unnütz, jemandem einen Gedanken erklären zu wollen, dem eine Anspielung nicht genügt.

Sólo las letras antiguas curan la sarna moderna.

The cause of democracy's stupidities is confidence in the anonymous citizen; and the cause of its crimes is the anonymous citizen's confidence in himself.

Science deceives us in three ways: by turning its propositions into norms, by disclosing its results rather than its methods, by ignoring its epistemological limitations.

To be right is just one more reason not to achieve any success.

Egalitarian societies strangle the imagination without even satisfying envy.

The bourgeoisie, in the feudal framework, settles in small urban centers where it becomes structured and civilized. With the break-up of this framework, the bourgeoisie spreads across all of society, invents the nationalist state, rationalist technology, anonymous urban agglomerations, industrial society, the mass man, and finally the process in which society wavers between the despotism of the mob and the despotism of the expert.

Man's freedom does not free him from necessity. But twists it into unforeseeable consequences.

Voor de democraat staat vrijheid niet gelijk aan alles kunnen zeggen wat je denkt, maar aan niet over alles hoeven nadenken wat je zegt.

Het volkse verwarren met het democratische is de strategie van de democraat.

If the world is condemned to mediocrity, if heroes are no more than statues and mythical figures and if adventure is for madmen then let us condemn ourselves to glory, let us become myth and let us be madmen, for the herd is already too numerous.

If one only aspires to provide a growing number of persons with a growing number of goods, without worrying about the quality of the persons, or of the goods, then capitalism is the perfect solution.

All life "colonizes." Everything that lives aspires to live infinitely. Nothing spontaneously limits itself. No harmony is the result of mutual respect or reciprocal restraint; harmony stems from hostile interventions and the temporary balance of forces.

Man, until yesterday, did not deserve to be called a rational animal. The definition was inexact as long as he invented, according to his preference, religious attitudes and ethical behavior, aesthetic tasks and philosophical meditations. Today, on the other hand, man limits himself to being a rational animal, that is to say: an inventor of practical rules at the service of his animality.