“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