Guenon Quotes

for there are things for which a symbolical mode of expression properly
so called is the only one possible, and which will consequently never
be understood by those for whom symbolism is a dead letter. ~ Rene Guenon

It is doubtless true that the masses have always been led in one way or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a predominantly passive element, a materia in the Aristotelian sense of the word; but in order to lead them today it is sufficient to possess oneself of purely material means, taking the word matter this time in its ordinary sense, and this clearly shows to what depths the present age has sunk; and at the same time these same masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this to be true gives an idea of the extent of their unintelligence. ~ Rene Guenon

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. ~ Rene Guenon

The saying signifies first and foremost that no exoteric teaching is capable of providing true knowledge, which man must find only within himself, for in fact no knowledge can be acquired except through a personal comprehension. Without this comprehension, no teaching can lead to an
effective result, and the teaching that awakens no personal resonance in the one who receives it cannot give any kind of knowledge. This is why Plato says that 'everything that a man learns is already within him'. All the experiences, all the external things that surround him, are only an occasion to help him become aware of what is within himself. This awakening he calls
anamnesis
, which signifies 'recollection'. ~ Rene Guenon

The quantitative degeneration of all things is closely linked to that of money, as is shown by the fact that nowadays the 'worth' of an object is ordinarily 'estimated' only in terms of its price, considered simply as a 'figure', a 'sum', or a numerical quantity of money; in fact, with most of our contemporaries, every judgment brought to bear on an object is nearly always based exclusively on what it costs. The word 'estimate' has been emphasized because it has in itself a double meaning, qualitative and quantitative; today the first meaning has been lost to sight, or what amounts to the same thing, means have been found to equate it to the second, and thus it comes about that not only is the 'worth' of an object 'estimated' according to its price, but the 'worth' of a man is 'estimated' according to his wealth. ~ Rene Guenon

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) ~ Rene Guenon

It is curious to note the widest read belief in antiquity that the omphalos had fallen from the sky, and an accurate idea of the sentiment of the Greeks regarding this stone can be had by saying it was somewhat similar to the sentiment Muslims feel with regard to the sacred black stone of the
Kaaba. ~ Rene Guenon

We have in fact entered upon the final phase ... , the darkest period of this dark age, the state of dissolution from which there is to be no emerging except through a cataclysm, since it is no longer a mere revival which is required, but a complete renovation. ~ Rene Guenon

A divine revelation should not consist only in uprooting us from the world's profanity in order to install us statically within a sacred world, in the bosom of which we could continue to lead almost the same life we led in the profane world. To enter into revelation is not merely to change objects as we do furniture. It is to be converted. Not to be converted once, but to be converted always. Sacred forms, rites, symbols and the Scriptures are basically conversion-makers, which means that we are never done with converting, never done with understanding, because they perplex and surpass all understanding. ~ Jean Borella

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. ~ Rene Guenon

If our
contemporaries as a whole could see what it is that is guiding them
and where they are really going, the modern world would at once
cease to exist as such, for the 'rectification' that has often been
alluded to in the author's other works could not fail to come about
through that very circumstance; on the other hand, since this 'recti-
fication' presupposes arrival at the point at which the 'descent' is
completely accomplished, where 'the wheel stops turning' - at least
for the instant marking the passage from one cycle to another - it is
necessary to conclude that, until this point is actually attained, it is
impossible that these things should be understood by men in gen-
eral, but only by the small number of those who are destined to pre-
pare, in one way or in another, the germs of the future cycle. It is
scarcely necessary to say that everything that the author has set out
in this book and elsewhere is intended to be addressed exclusively to
these few, without any concern for the inevitable incomprehension
of the others; it is true that these others are, and still must be for a
certain time to come, an immense majority, but then it is precisely
in the 'reign of quantity', and only then, that the opinion of the
majority can claim to be taken into consideration at all. ~ Rene Guenon

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! ~ Rene Guenon

to conceive of the Infinite quantitatively is not only to limit it, but in addition it
is to conceive of it as subject to increase and decrease, which is no less absurd; with similar considerations one quickly finds oneself envisaging not only several infinites that coexist without confounding or excluding one another, but also infinites that are larger or smaller than others; and finally, the infinite having become so relative under these conditions that it no longer suffices, the 'transfinite' is invented, that is, the domain of quantities greater than the infinite. Here, indeed, it is properly a matter of 'invention, for such conceptions correspond to no reality. So many words, so many absurdities, even regarding simple, elementary logic, yet this does not prevent one from finding among those responsible some who even claim to be 'specialists' in logic, so great is the intellectual confusion of our times! ~ Rene Guenon

[...] 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. ~ Rene Guenon

The founding of a science more or less on the notion of repetition brings in its train yet another delusion of a quantitative kind, the delusion that consists in thinking that the accumulation of a large number of facts can be of use by itself as 'proof' of a theory; nevertheless, even a little reflection will make it evident that facts of the same kind are always indefinite in multitude, so that they can never all be taken into account, quite apart from the consideration that the same facts usually fit several different theories equally well. It will be said that the establishment of a greater number of facts does at least give more 'probability' to a theory; but to say so is to admit that no certitude can be arrived at in that way, and that therefore the conclusions promulgated have nothing 'exact' about them; it is also an admission of the wholly 'empirical' character of modern science, although, by a strange irony, its partisans are pleased to accuse of 'empiricism' the knowledge of the ancients, whereas exactly the opposite is the truth: for this ancient knowledge, of the true nature of which they have no idea whatever, started from principles and not from experimental observations, so that it can truly be said that profane science is built up exactly the opposite way round to traditional science. ~ Rene Guenon

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. ~ Rene Guenon

Is not the heart of man indeed the vase in which his life is continuously maintained by means of his blood? ~ Rene Guenon

for everything that has any
kind of existence, even error, has necessarily its reason for existence,
and disorder itself must in the end find its place among the elements
of universal order. Thus, whereas the modern world considered in
itself is an anomaly and even a sort of monstrosity, it is no less true
that, when viewed in relation to the whole historical cycle of which
it is a part, it corresponds exactly to the conditions pertaining to a
certain phase of that cycle, the phase that the Hindu tradition speci-
fies as the final period of the Kali-Yuga. It is these conditions, arising ~ Rene Guenon

The differences between East and West seem to have been continually on the increase, but this divergence can be said to have been one-sided, in the sense that it is only the West which has changes, whereas the East, broadly speaking, has remained much the same as it was in times which we are accustomed to call ancient, but which nevertheless are comparatively recent. ~ Rene Guenon

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

No one can deny that the feudal wars, which were quite localized and subject moreover to restrictive regulation by the spiritual authority, were nothing compared to the national wars that have resulted, following the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, in armed nations, and we have seen in our own day new developments hardly reassuring for the future.
By compelling all men indiscriminately lo take part in modern wars, the essential distinctions among the social functions are entirely ignored, this being moreover a logical consequence of 'egalitarianism'. ~ Rene Guenon

Be that as it may, Leibnitz was never able to explain the principles of his calculus clearly, and this shows that there was something in it that was beyond him, something that was as it were imposed upon him without his being conscious of it; had he taken this into account, he most certainly would not have engaged in any dispute over 'priority' with Newton. Besides, these sorts of disputes are always completely vain, for ideas, insofar as they are true, are not the property of anyone, despite what modern 'individualism' might have to say; it is only error that can properly be attributed to human individuals. ~ Rene Guenon

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! ~ Rene Guenon

The human individual is, at one and the same time, much more and much less than is ordinarily supposed in the West; he is greater by reason of his possibilities of indefinite extension beyond the corporeal modality, in short, of all that refers to what we have been studying; but he is also much less since, far from constituting a complete and sufficient being in himself, he is only an exterior manifestation, a fleeting appearance clothing the true being, which in no way affects the essence of the latter in its immutability ~ Rene Guenon

From all that has been said, we see that real knowledge is not based on the path of reason, but on the spirit and the whole being, for it is non other than the realization of this being in all its states, which is the culmination of knowledge and the attainment of supreme wisdom. In reality, what belongs to the soul, and even to the spirit, represent only degrees on the path toward the intimate essence that is the true self; this self can be found only when the being has reached its own center, all its powers being united and concentrated as in the single point in which all things appear to it, since they are contained in this point as in their first and unique principle; thus the being is able to know everything as in itself and of itself, as the totality of existence in the oneness of its own essence. ~ Rene Guenon

[...] if he then should wish to perform rites belonging to many different forms, claiming to use them concurrently as means and 'supports' of his spiritual development, he will not really be able to combine them except 'from the outside', which amounts to saying that what he accomplishes will be nothing else than syncretism, which consists precisely in this kind of mingling of disparate elements that nothing really unifies. [...] This situation is similar to that of someone who, hoping to secure his health the more effectively, makes use at one and the same time of many different medicines the effects of which neutralize and destroy each other and sometimes even provoke unforeseen reactions harmful to his organism. There are things that are efficacious when used separately but that are nonetheless radically incompatible. ~ Rene Guenon

A word that rose to honor at the time of the Renaissance, and that summarized in advance the whole program of modern civilization is 'humanism'. Men were indeed concerned to reduce everything to purely human proportions, to eliminate every principle of a higher order, and, one might say, symbolically to turn away from the heavens under pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone as far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had at least never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is in any case quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy. ~ Rene Guenon

[...] The movement of the celestial bodies can be given as an example. It is not exactly circular, but elliptic; the ellipse constitutes as it were a first "specification" of the circle, by the splitting of the center into two poles or "foci" in the direction of one of the diameters which thereafter plays a special "axial" part, while at the same time all the other diameters are differentiated one from another in respect of their lengths. It may be added incidentally in this connection that, since the planets describe ellipses of which the sun occupies one of the foci, the question arises as to what the other focus corresponds to; as there is nothing corporeal actually there, there must be something belonging only to the subtle order; but that question cannot be further examined here, as it would be quite outside our subject. ~ Rene Guenon

One may at least surmise that this esoteric teaching had a close and direct connection with wisdom, and that it did not only appeal to reason or to logic, as is the case with philosophy, which for this reason has been called rational knowledge - the philosophers of antiquity maintained that rational knowledge, that is, philosophy, is not the highest degree of knowledge, is not wisdom. ~ Rene Guenon

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'… ~ Rene Guenon

This easily explains a fact we have frequently noted concerning people described as 'cultured'. The ordinary meaning of this word is well-known; it does not even refer to an ever so insubstantial knowledge, no matter how limited and inferior its scope, but to a superficial smattering of all sorts of things, to an education that is above all 'literary' and in any case purely bookish and verbal, one that allows its possessor to speak with assurance about everything, even including what he is most ignorant of, and is liable to deceive those who are easily taken in by such brilliant veneers and who fail to see that what lies behind them is nothing at all. ~ Rene Guenon

It is almost as if the Greeks, at a time when they were about to disappear from history, wished to avenge themselves for their own incomprehension by imposing on a whole section of mankind the limitations of their own mental horizons. ~ Rene Guenon

We cannot help noticing that, like all propagandists, the apostles of tolerance, truth to tell, are very often the most intolerant of men. This is what has in fact happened, and it is strangely ironical : those who wished to overthrow all dogma have created for their own use, we will not say a new dogma, but a caricature of dogma, which they have succeeded in imposing on the western world in general; in this way there have been established, under the pretext of "freedom of thought," the most chimerical beliefs that have ever been seen at any time, under the form of these different idols, of which we have just singled out some of the more important. ~ Rene Guenon

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

[Modern scientific] theories can necessarily never be more than hypothetical, since their starting-point is wholly empirical, for facts in themselves are always susceptible of diverse explanations and so never have been and never will be able to guarantee the truth of any theory. ~ Rene Guenon

This indeed is the most conspicuous feature of the modern period: need for ceaseless agitation, for unending change, and for ever-increasing speed, matching the speed with which events themselves succeed one another. It is dispersion in multiplicity, and in a multiplicity that is no longer unified by consciousness of any higher principle; in daily life, as in scientific ideas, it is analysis driven to an extreme, endless subdivision, a veritable disintegration of human activity in all the orders in which this can still be exercised; hence the inaptitude for synthesis and the incapacity for any sort of concentration that is so striking in the eyes of Easterners. These are the natural and inevitable results of an ever more pronounced materialization, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, and this-be it said in passing-is why all that proceeds from matter can beget only strife and all manner of conflicts between peoples as between individuals. The deeper one sinks into matter, the more the elements of division and opposition gain force and scope; and, contrariwise, the more one rises toward pure spirituality, the nearer one approaches that unity which can only be fully realized by consciousness of universal principles. ~ Rene Guenon