Quotes About Progress

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.

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

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.

The failure of progress has not consisted in the non-fulfillment but in the fulfillment of its promises.

A civilization's memory resides in the continuity of its institutions. The revolution that interrupts a civilization's memory, by destroying those institutions, does not relieve society of a bothersome caparison that is paralyzing it, but merely forces it to start over.

If liberty is to last, it should be the goal of social organization and not the starting point.

The standard-bearers of liberty celebrated by the 19th century ended up as the vanguard of industrial despotism.

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.

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

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

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

The technification of the world blunts one's sensibility and does not refine one's senses.

Die moderne Literatur: dieses kolossale reaktionäre Unterfangen.

Modern literature: this colossal reactionary enterprise.

The 'wheel of fortune' is a better analogy for history than the 'evolution of humanity.

Humanity will one day solemnly recall the events that initiated the dismantlement of industrial society.

When respect for tradition dies out, society, in its incessant desire to renew itself, consumes itself in a frenzy.

The cause of the modern disease is the conviction that man can cure himself.

Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road "change." The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense. The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man.

Wenn ein Reaktionär von "unvermeidlicher Restauration" spricht, dürfen wir nicht vergessen, dass der Reaktionär Jahrtausenden rechnet.

EL mayor triunfo de la ciencia parece estar en la velocidad creciente con que el bobo puede trasladar su bobería de un sitio a otro sitio.

All science feeds on the convictions that it strangles.

Although it grieves the angelism of the democrat: one cannot build a civilisation with miserable biological material.