Nicolas Gomez Davila quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Nicolas Gomez Davila

Nicolas Gomez Davila Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Nicolas Gomez Davila on Wise Famous Quotes.

The unbeliever imagines that religion pretends to offer answers, while the believer knows that the only promise it makes is to multiply questions.

Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny.

Everything that makes man feel that mystery envelops him makes him more intelligent.

The gesture, rather than the word, is the true transmitter of traditions.

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about truth.

The ability to consume pornography is the distinctive characteristic of the imbecile.

Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it.

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.

When he is stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian.

Someone who has been defeated should not console himself with the possible retaliations of history, but with the patent excellence of his cause.

The greatest modern error is not to proclaim that God died, but to believe that the devil has died.

To live with lucidity a simple, quiet, discreet life among intelligent books, loving a few beings.

In society just as in the soul,
when hierarchies abdicate the appetites rule.

Truth is in history, but history is not the truth.

When nothing in society deserves respect, we should fashion for ourselves in solitude new silent loyalties.

Being right is one more good reason for not succeeding

Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.

Wise politics is the art of invigorating society and weakening the State.

Poetry rescues things by reconciling matter and spirit in the metaphor.

Marxism and psychoanalysis have been the two traps of the modern intelligence.

Being a reactionary is not about believing in certain solutions, but about having an acute sense of the complexity of the problems.

Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from
indifference toward the unique values which created it.

To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more

A reactionary is anyone who is not prepared to buy his victory at any price.

The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy.

Between man and nothingness passes the shadow of God.

The Church used to absolve sinners; today it has the gall to absolve sins.

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

I distrust every idea that doesn't seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries.

Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion

Where Christianity disappears, greed, envy, and lust invent a thousand ideologies to justify themselves.

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question.

In a century where the media publish endless stupidities, the cultured man is defined not by what he knows but by what he ignores.

The particular creature we love is never God's rival. What ends in apostasy is the worship of man, the cult of humanity.

Jesus Christ would not attract listeners today by preaching as the Son of God, but as the son of a carpenter.

In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish.
The fool is cured by "reason," "progress," alcohol, work.

In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know.

Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.

The pure reactionary is not a dreamer of abolished pasts, but a hunter of sacred shades on the eternal hills.

Useless, like a revolution.

A simple fit of impatience often soon bridges the distance between utopia and murder.

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality.

Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.

The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them.

An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition.
It prefers a lie, no matter how idiotic it may be.

Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.

Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience.

Only he lives his life who observes it, thinks it, and says it; the rest let life live them.

The reactionary's objection is not discussed; it is disdained.

It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the rest of the animals.

Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.

The fool is disturbed not when they tell him that his ideas are false, but when they suggest that they have gone out of style.

In spiritually arid centuries, the only man to realize that the century is dying from thirst is the man who still harnesses an underground spring.

The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time.

Modern history is the dialogue between two men: one who believes in God, another who believes he is a god.

The true religion is monastic, ascetic, authoritarian, hierarchical.

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems.

The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs.

Without economic concerns the fool dies from boredom.

The curve of man's knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets

The French Revolution has been the highest wave of the Gnostic tide.

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order.

The individual seeks out the heat of the crowd, in this century, to protect himself against the cold emanating from the corpse of the world.

The so highly acclaimed "dominion of man over nature" turned out to be merely an enormous capability to kill.

Modern man does not love, but seeks refuge in love; does not hope, but seeks refuge in hope; does not believe, but seeks refuge in a dogma.

Total freedom of expression does not compensate for lack of talent.

History clearly demonstrates that governing is a task that exceeds man's ability.

Wisdom consists in being moderate not out of horror of excess, but out of love for the limit.

Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting.

In unremarkable texts we soon trip on phrases that penetrate into us, as if a sword has thrust up to its hilt inside us.

Ideas tyrannize the man who has but few.

In order to escape from this prison, one must learn not to come to an arrangement with its indisputable comforts.

Stupidity is the fuel of revolutions.