Nicolás Gómez Dávila Quotes

The curve of man’s knowledge of himself ascends until the 17th century, declines gradually afterwards, in this century it finally plummets
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
The philosopher is not the spokesman of his age, but an angel imprisoned in time.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
The anarchy that threatens a degrading society is not its punishment, but its remedy.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies fromindifference toward the unique values which created it.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
The greatest modern error is not to proclaim that God died, but to believe that the devil has died.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
It is impossible to convince the fool that there are pleasures superior to those we share with the rest of the animals.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Ideas tyrannize the man who has but few.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
The particular creature we love is never God’s rival. What ends in apostasy is the worship of man, the cult of humanity.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
To demand that the intelligence abstain from judging mutilates its faculty of understanding.It is in the value judgment that understanding culminates.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Being a reactionary is not about believing in certain solutions, but about having an acute sense of the complexity of the problems.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
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.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
To be right is just one more reason not to achieve any success.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Everything that makes man feel that mystery envelops him makes him more intelligent.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
In unremarkable texts we soon trip on phrases that penetrate into us, as if a sword has thrust up to its hilt inside us.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
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.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching the walls of his dungeon.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Modern man is a prisoner who thinks he is free because he refrains from touching thewalls of his dungeon.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
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.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
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.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
In the intelligent man faith is the only remedy for anguish.The fool is cured by “reason,” “progress,” alcohol, work.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Faith is not knowledge of an object but communion with it.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Many love humanity only in order to forget God with a clear conscience.
Nicolás Gómez Dávila