Wilnelia Davila Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

Being right is one more good reason for not succeeding ~ 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

The true religion is monastic, ascetic, authoritarian, hierarchical. ~ 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 tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

I distrust every idea that doesn't seem obsolete and grotesque to my contemporaries. ~ 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 society just as in the soul,
when hierarchies abdicate the appetites rule. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stupidity is the fuel of revolutions. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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