Quotes from Rene Guenon

The "end of a world" never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion

The profane sciences of which the modern world is so proud are really and truly only the degenerate 'residues' of the ancient traditional sciences.

What men call chance is simply their ignorance of causes; if the statement that something had happened by chance were to mean that it had no cause, it would be a contradiction in terms.

The men of today boast of the ever growing extent of the modifications they impose on the world, and the consequence is that everything is thereby made more and more 'artificial'…

Those who might be tempted to give way to despair should realize that nothing accomplished in this order can ever be lost, that confusion, error and darkness can win the day only apparently and in a purely ephemeral way, that all partial and transitory disequilibrium must perforce contribute towards the greater equilibrium of the whole, and that nothing can ultimately prevail against the power of truth.

It sometimes so happens that people who imagine that they are fighting the devil, whatever their particular notion of the devil may be, are thus turned, without any suspicion of the fact on their part, into his best servants!

So long as western people imagine that there only exists a single type of humanity, that there is only one 'civilization', at different stages of development, no mutual understanding will be possible.

True ideas do not change or develop, but remain as they are in the timeless 'present.

Europeans, since the days when they began to believe in :progress" and in "evolution," that is to say since a little more than a century ago, profess to see a sign of inferiority in this absence of change, whereas for our part, we look upon it as a balanced condition which Western civilization has failed to achieve.

Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level.

We cannot help noticing that, like all propagandists, the apostles of tolerance, truth to tell, are very often the most intolerant of men.

It is also said that Genghis Khan wanted to attack the kingdom of Prester John, but that the latter repulsed him by unleashing thunderbolts against his armies.

Within the religious realm, the same can be said about that type of'apologetics' that claims to agree with the results of modern science-an utterly illusory undertaking and one that constantly requires revision; one that also runs the risk of linking religion with changing and ephemeral conceptions, from which it must remain completely independent.

Let us add that nature is given its full significance only if it is looked at as offering us a means of rising up to the knowledge of divine truths, which is precisely the essential function which we have recognized in symbolism.

d'ailleurs nous ne pouvons nous empêcher de constater que, comme tous les propagandistes, les apôtres de la tolérance sont très souvent, en fait, les plus intolérants des hommes.

tandis que le rationaliste vulgaire, fût-il l'homme le plus ignorant de toute philosophie, est au contraire le plus empressé à se proclamer tel, en même temps qu'il se pare fièrement du titre plutôt ironique de « libre-penseur », alors qu'il n'est en réalité que l'esclave de tous les préjugés courants de son époque.

Creation is the work of the Word; it is also, and by this very fact, His manifestation, his outward affirmation; and this is why the world is like a divine language, for those who know how to understand it: Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei (The heavens declare the glory of God, Ps. XIX:2)

This 'specialization', arising from an analytical attitude of mind, has been pushed to such a point that those who have undergone its influence are incapable of conceiving of a science that deals with nature in its entirety.

To speak of the 'properties of matter' while asserting at the same time that 'matter is inert' is an insoluble contradiction; and, by a strange irony, modern 'scientism', which claims to eliminate all 'mystery', nonetheless appeals in its vain attempts at explanation only to the very thing that is most 'mysterious' in the popular sense of the word, that is to say most obscure and least intelligible!

Indeed, in many cases, discussion can be carried on indefinitely without arriving at any solution, which is the reason why almost all modern philosophy is built up on quibbles and badly-framed questions. Far from clearing up these questions, as it is commonly supposed to do, discussion usually only entangles or obscures them still further [...]

Et c'est là, en même temps, ce qui donne l'illusion du progrès à ceux qui, ne connaissant qu'une civilisation, voient exclusivement la direction dans laquelle elle se développe, croient qu'elle est la seule possible, et ne se rendent pas compte que ce développement sur un point peut être largement compensé par une régression sur d'autres points.

The destructive action of time only allows what is superior to time to survive.

il arrive malheureusement parfois que ceux qui croient combattre le diable, quelque idée qu'ils s'en fassent d'ailleurs, se trouvent ainsi tout simplement, sans s'en douter le moins du monde, transformés en ses meilleurs serviteurs !

It may be remarked incidentally that the contentions of philosophers are often much more justifiable when they are arguing against other philosophers than when they pass on to expound their own views, and as each one generally sees fairly clearly the defects of the others, they more or less destroy one another mutually.