Nicolas Gomez Davila Quotes & Sayings

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

Stupidity is the fuel of revolutions. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

Without economic concerns the fool dies from boredom. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Revolution is progressive and seeks the strengthening of the state; rebellion is reactionary and seeks its disappearance.
The revolutionary is a potential government official; the rebel is a reactionary in action. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

The ability to consume pornography is the distinctive characteristic of the imbecile. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Everything that makes man feel that mystery envelops him makes him more intelligent. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

The French Revolution has been the highest wave of the Gnostic tide. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Poetry rescues things by reconciling matter and spirit in the metaphor. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

Truth is in history, but history is not the truth. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Marxism and psychoanalysis have been the two traps of the modern intelligence. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The true religion is monastic, ascetic, authoritarian, hierarchical. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

To be right is just one more reason not to achieve any success. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

History clearly demonstrates that governing is a task that exceeds man's ability. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Wise politics is the art of invigorating society and weakening the State. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

The reactionary's objection is not discussed; it is disdained. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The Gnostic is a born revolutionary because total rejection is the perfect proclamation of his divine autonomy.

The Greek roots of the Gnosticism of late antiquity are not to be found in Platonic dualism, but rather in Stoic monism.

Christianity and Gnosticism shared the question. Feeling "allogenous" was a common characteristic. The state of "alienation" is an historical constant, but becomes more acute in times of social crisis. "Alienation" is the ground in which either a Romantic Christian or a democratic Gnostic answer germinates. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

To write for posterity* is not to worry whether they will read us tomorrow.
It is to aspire to a certain quality of writing.
Even when no one reads us.

*Posterity is not the whole of future generations. It is a small group of men with taste, a proper upbringing, and erudition, in each generation. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Phrases are pebbles that the writer tosses into the reader's soul.
The diameter of the concentric waves they displace depends on the dimensions of the pond. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

A reactionary is anyone who is not prepared to buy his victory at any price. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Anguish over the decline of civilization is the affliction of a reactionary.
The democrat cannot lament the disappearance of something of which he is ignorant. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Total freedom of expression does not compensate for lack of talent. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

A simple fit of impatience often soon bridges the distance between utopia and murder. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

To demand that the intelligence abstain from judging mutilates its faculty of understanding.
It is in the value judgment that understanding culminates. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Revolutions are carried out in order to change the ownership of property and the names of streets. The revolutionary who seeks to change "man's condition" ends up being shot for being a counter-revolutionary. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Revolutionary intellectuals have the historic mission of inventing the vocabulary and the themes for the next tyranny. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

In society just as in the soul,
when hierarchies abdicate the appetites rule. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Ideas tyrannize the man who has but few. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The Church used to absolve sinners; today it has the gall to absolve sins. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The gesture, rather than the word, is the true transmitter of traditions. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about truth. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Man forges his own history, imposing on nature the errors of his free will. If hatred and greed drag man down among bloody mazes, the struggle is joined between perverted freedoms and just freedoms. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

The intelligent man quickly reaches reactionary conclusions.
Today, however, the universal consensus of fools turns him into a coward.
When they interrogate him in public, he denies being a Galilean. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Conformism and non-conformism are symmetrical expressions of a lack of originality. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Between man and nothingness passes the shadow of God. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Being right is one more good reason for not succeeding — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

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. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Useless, like a revolution. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

The modern world seems invincible. Like the extinct dinosaurs. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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