Davila Quotes

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

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

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

Modern stupidities are more irritating than ancient stupidities because their proselytes seek to justify them in the name of reason. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

Population growth disquiets the demographer only when he fears that it will impede economic progress or make it harder to feed the masses.
But that man needs solitude, that human proliferation produces cruel societies, that distance is required between men so that the spirit might breathe, does not interest him.
The quality of man does not matter to him. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

The increasing disintegration of the person can be measured by comparing the expression "amorous adventure," which was in style in the 18th century, with the expression "sexual experience," which is used in the 20th century. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Universal suffrage in the end does not recognize any of the individual's rights except the "right" to be alternately oppressor or oppressed. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

The freer man believes he is, the easier it is to indoctrinate him. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Modern man defends nothing energetically except his right to debauchery. ~ 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

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

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

Stupidity is the fuel of revolutions. ~ 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

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. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

The most ominous of modern perversions is the shame of appearing naïve if we do not flirt with evil.
(La más ominosa de las perversiones modernas es la vergüenza de parecer ingenuos si no coqueteamos con el mal.) ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

During childhood, it's about trying to help develop who your kid's going to be. During adolescence, it's about responding to who your kid wants to be. ~ Jennifer Senior

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

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

Reading is an unsurpassable drug, because more than just the mediocrity of our lives, it allows us to escape the mediocrity of our souls. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

The barbarian either totally mocks or totally worships.
Civilization is a smile that discreetly combines irony and respect. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

Rather than humanizing technology, modern man prefers to technify man. ~ 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

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

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

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

Nietzsche would be the only noble inhabitant of a derelict world. Only his choice could be exposed without shame to the resurrection of God. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

An atheist is respectable as long as he does not teach that the dignity of man is the basis of ethics and that love for humanity is the true religion. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Ideologies were invented so that men who do not think can give their opinions. ~ 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

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

It is not just that human trash accumulates in cities - it is that cities turn what accumulates in them into trash. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

In order not to think of the world which science describes, man gets drunk on technology. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal. ~ 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

Progress ages badly.
Each generation brings a new model of progressivism which discards with contempt the previous model.
Nothing is more grotesque than yesterday's progressive. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

The contemporary anthropologist, under democrats' severe gaze, skips quickly over ethnic differences like over hot coals. ~ 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

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

Revolutions are frightening, but election campaigns are disgusting. ~ 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

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

Sensuality is a cultural legacy of the ancient world.
Societies where the Greco-Roman legacy is being wiped out, or where it does not exist, only know sentimentalism and sexuality. ~ 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

Reading Nietzsche as a response is not understanding him. Nietzsche is an immense interrogation. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Now, even though it be neither necessity nor caprice, history, for the authentic reactionary, is not, for all that, an interior dialectic of the immanent will, but rather a temporal adventure between man and that which transcends him. His labors are traces, on the disturbed sand, of the body of a beast and the aura of an angel. History is a tatter, torn from man's freedom, waving in the breath of destiny. Man cannot be silent because his liberty is not merely a sanctuary where he escapes from deadening routine and takes refuge in order to become his own master. But in the free act the radical does not attain possession of his essence. Liberty is not an abstract possibility of choosing among known goods, but rather the concrete condition in which we are granted the possession of new goods. Freedom is not a momentary judgement between conflicting instincts, but rather the summit from which man contemplates the ascent of new stars among the luminous dust of the starry sky. Liberty places man among prohibitions that are not physical and imperatives that are not vital. The free moment dispels the unreal brightness of the day, in order that the motion of the universe which slides its fleeting lights over the shuddering of our flesh might rise up on the horizon of our soul.

If the progressive casts himself into the future, and the conservative into the past, the authentic reactionary does not measure his anxiety with the history of yesterday or with the history of tomorro ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

The three hypostasis of egoism are: individualism, nationalism, collectivism. The democratic trinity. ~ 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

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

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

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

Instead of looking for explanations for the fact of inequality, anthropologists should look for the explanation for the notion of equality. ~ 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

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

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

Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it. ~ 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 man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila