#1,191

A fight between democratic sects temporarily distracts them from the dismantling of society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,190

The tissues of society become cancerous when the duties of some are transformed into the rights of others.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,189

The jurist, in democracies, is not an expert in laws but in government functionaries.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,188

Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,187

What some call religion barely astonishes us more than what others call science.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,186

If we trust in God, not even our own triumph should shock us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,185

To be modern is not to have overcome yesterday’s problems; it is to believe one has overcome them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,184

Opinions, customs, institutions, cities—everything has become vulgar, since we gave up repairing the old in order to buy every day some gaudy novelty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 208

#1,183

The historian has three themes: the individuality of persons, the individuality of concrete totalities, the individuality of the instant.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,182

Where it is possible to say whatever one wants, no one makes the effort to say only what matters.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,181

The three stages of capitalism: in the first, the businessman trades in order to construct palaces for himself; in the second, to reinvest his earnings; in the third, to pay taxes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,180

Reason, Progress, and Justice are the three theological virtues of the fool.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,179

“Civilizations are mortal” is the greatest comfort for someone alive today.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,178

The individual is nothing but one of the multiple individualities of history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,177

Every non-hierarchical society is divided into two parts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 207

#1,176

Brief upheavals are enough to demolish the buildings of the spirit, while our natural corruption protects technological successes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,175

Loyalty is the noblest music on earth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,174

It is sufficient to open our windows to the night, so that the breeze of mysterious springtimes will stir the calcified ashes of our soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,173

The promises of life disappoint no one but the man who believes they are fulfilled here.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,172

He who betrays us never forgives us for his betrayal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,171

Revolutions are not the locomotives but the derailments of history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,170

Nations have two noble modes of existence—ascent or decadence—and one vulgar mode—prosperity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 206

#1,169

Such is the complexity of historical events that every theory finds cases to which it can be applied.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,168

If it is merely a matter of organizing an earthly paradise, curates are more than enough.
The devil will do.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,167

A soul is cultured if in it the din of the living does not drown out the music of the dead.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,166

An age is civilized if it does not reserve intelligence for professional work.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,165

The impact a text makes is proportional to the cunning of its insinuations.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,164

Mutual disrespect quickly turns friendship or love between plebeian souls into a mere bilateral contract for rudeness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,163

The frankness of someone who does not respect himself turns into simple shamelessness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 205

#1,162

The egoist may not know what is suitable for himself, but he does not act, at least, as if he knew what is suitable for everyone else.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,161

The imbecile’s egoism is his neighbors’ safeguard.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,160

Even when we know that everything perishes, we should still construct our temporary shelters with granite.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,159

Between animal and man there is no barrier but a palisade of taboos.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,158

It is easier to forgive certain hatreds than to share certain admirations.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,157

The writer’s talent lies not in describing a person, a landscape, or a scene, but in making us believe he did.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 204

#1,156

The writer who does not offer intellectual trifles for sale cannot complain of his limited success.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 203

#1,155

The solutions man finds always end up being less interesting than the problems.
The only interesting solutions are those which God reserves to Himself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 203

#1,154

The people, after a few years, would forget the names of illustrious demagogues, if their successors did not oblige the taxpayer to pay for memorial services for them.
The people’s memory only welcomes as guests the names of kings.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 203

#1,153

We can beg for mercy.
But with what right do we demand justice?

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 203

#1,152

Against the lowliness of the tasks which life assigns him nobody protests as loudly as the man who is incapable of carrying out any others.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 203

#1,151

Material prosperity is less corrupting than the intellectual and moral prerequisites for achieving it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,150

We mediocre men are saved when we are so mediocre that we succeed in seeing it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,149

The controversy surrounding a work of art today is not a measure of aesthetic importance but of political exploitation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,148

An ethics that does not command us to renounce is a crime against the dignity to which we should aspire and against the happiness which we can obtain.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,147

We all know, in every field, sergeants who are disdainful of Alexander.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,146

The organ of pleasure is the intelligence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 202

#1,145

Sub-literature is the group of worthy books that each new generation reads with pleasure, but which nobody can re-read.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 201

#1,144

A philosophy’s atheism consists less in denying God than in not finding a place for Him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 201

#1,143

The irruption of non-European history into the Western tradition is an episode in the intellectual life of the 19th century.
The participants in the Western tradition are not necessary heirs of non-Western history and can only inherit it by respecting the intellectual conditions of its entry into the patrimony of the West.
In other words, there can be Sinologists in the West, for instance, but no Taoists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 201

#1,142

The city is disappearing while the entire world is becoming urbanized.
A city, in the West, was a person.
Today, overexpansion and state centralism are disintegrating it into a mere inanimate heap of housing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 201

#1,141

Unless we inherit a spiritual tradition to interpret it, life experience teaches us nothing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,140

The only man who thanks life for what it gives him is the man who does not expect everything from life.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,139

An irreligious society cannot endure the truth of the human condition.
It prefers a lie, no matter how idiotic it may be.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,138

Art is the most dangerous reactionary ferment in a democratic, industrial, and progressive society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,137

Social problems are the favorite refuge of those fleeing their own problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,136

The people were spiritually rich until the semi-educated decided to educate them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,135

Man today does not live in space and time.
But in geometry and chronometers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 200

#1,134

A “patriot,” in democracies, is someone who lives from the State; an “egoist,” someone from whom the State lives.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,133

No one should take himself seriously.
Only hope eventually to be taken seriously.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,132

"Renouncing the world" ceases to be an achievement and becomes a temptation as Progress progresses.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,131

Intellectual combat is won not by throwing up barricades, but by courteously leaving the field open, so that the adversary’s stupidities only break each other's noses.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,130

A civilization’s memory resides in the continuity of its institutions.
The revolution that interrupts a civilization's memory, by destroying those institutions, does not relieve society of a bothersome caparison that is paralyzing it, but merely forces it to start over.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,129

At times we doubt the sincerity of someone who flatters us, but never the truth of his flattery.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 199

#1,128

If we believe in God we should not say, “I believe in God,” but rather, “God believes in me.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,127

Whoever fights against the process of aging merely ages without ever maturing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,126

If man ever managed to fabricate a man, the enigma of man will not have been deciphered, but obscured.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,125

New evidence is not more perfect than old evidence.
It is merely new evidence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,124

Denying that a “human nature” exists is the ideological trick the optimist employs to defend himself against history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 198

#1,123

It is not just to reproach this century’s writers for their bad taste when the very notion of taste has perished.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,122

No social class has exploited the other social classes more brazenly than that which today calls itself “the state.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 198

#1,121

The ideas which influence politics the least are political ideas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,120

Youths sail in a sea of conformity without noticing it.
In each wave pulling it along, youths notice only the short-lasting foam differentiating it from the others, and not the common tide pushing them all together.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,119

Individualism and collectivism are both social repercussions of the belief in the immortality of the soul.
The individual turns in on himself, examines himself, observes himself, and discovers his individuality, or he turns out from himself, projects himself, disperses himself, and confuses himself with a collectivity, according to whether he believes, or does not believe, in an incorruptible tribunal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,118

The sentences handed down on the Day of Judgment will be less categorical and emphatic than those handed down by any journalist on any topic.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,117

A partisan of equality who is not envious can only be so because he is stupid.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,116

Man is not imprisoned; he imprisons himself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 197

#1,115

The key event of this century is the demographic explosion of idiotic ideas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,114

Posterity is not going to understand what an achievement mere good sense is in this insane century.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,113

The devil does not gain mastery over the soul that knows how to smile.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,112

Fools believe that humanity only now knows certain important things, when there is nothing important which humanity has not known since the beginning.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,111

The unrestricted publication of news, which is demanded by the mass media, has forced the public lie to assume, in the state, the traditional function of the secret.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,110

Frustration is the distinctive psychological characteristic of democratic society.
Where all may legitimately aspire to the summit, the entire pyramid is an accumulation of frustrated individuals.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,109

Faith is not knowledge of the object.
But communication with it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 196

#1,108

It is not enough to imagine something for it to exist, but only what we imagine exists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,107

Photography murdered the imagination.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,106

I do not know whether, in another world, the devil punishes an irreligious society.
But I see that it is soon punished here by aesthetics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,105

Bourgeois reformers prepare legal precedents for their future despoilers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,104

A typical trait is not a trait that recurs a certain number of times, but one that has particular importance.
Statistics do not replace intuition.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,103

Capitalist society became wealthy by joining the ignorance of an astute entrepreneur, whose job is to direct, with the science of a stupid technician, whose job is to execute.
Socialism seeks to become wealthy by entrusting the task of directing to the technician.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,102

Being a reactionary is not about believing in certain solutions, but about having an acute sense of the complexity of the problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 195

#1,101

The 19th century did not live with more anguish because of its sexual repression than the 20th century with its sexual liberation.
Identical obsession, even when the symptoms are the opposite.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,100

Justice has been one of the motors of history, because it is the name envy assumes in the mouth of the son contesting his parents' will.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,099

When we sail in oceans of stupidity, intelligence requires the aid of good taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,098

That liberation of humanity whose praises the 19th century sang ended up being nothing more than international tourism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,097

The names of famous leftists end up as insulting adjectives in the mouths of leftists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,096

Bureaucracy is one of democracy’s means that turn into one of its ends.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,095

To discover the fool there is no better reagent than the word “medieval.”
He immediately sees red.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 194

#1,094

As a criterion of what is best, modern man knows nothing but posteriority.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,093

Common good, general will, historical necessity, are the names with which the inevitable flatterer christens the whims of force.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,092

The dissemination of culture has had the effect of enabling the fool to chatter about what he does not know.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,091

Engaging in dialogue with those who do not share our postulates is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,090

Happily, the world cannot be explained.
(What kind of world would it be if it could be explained by man?)

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,089

Every work of art speaks to us of God.
No matter what it says.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,088

Democracy is the political regime in which the citizen entrusts the public interests to those men to whom he would never entrust his private interests.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 193

#1,087

Modern man’s misfortune lies not in having to live a mediocre life, but in believing that he could live a life that is not mediocre.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,086

The only important lessons are those which cannot be imparted except by the tone of one’s voice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,085

Civilization always consists in dressing oneself, not undressing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,084

Hope is not fatally stultifying, if we do not hope in a future with an upper-case F.
To cherish the hope of a new earthly splendor is not illicit, provided we hope in a splendor that is wounded, frail, mortal.
We can love what is of the earth without fault, as long as we remember that we love fleeting clay.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,083

A motto for the young leftist: revolution and pussy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,082

Only the soul anchored in the past is not shipwrecked in night storms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,081

It is not a restoration for which the reactionary yearns, but for a new miracle.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 192

#1,080

That Christianity may not solve social problems is no reason to commit apostasy except for those who forget that it never promised to solve them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,079

The appearance of nationalism in any nation indicates that its originality is in its death throes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,078

For the trunk of individuality to grow, one must prevent freedom from making the trunk spread out into branches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,077

What most likely is upon us is not a revolutionary terror, but a counter-revolutionary terror implemented by disgusted revolutionaries.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,076

To search for the “truth outside of time” is the way to find the “truth of our time.”
Whoever searches for the “truth of his time” finds the clichés of the day.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,075

Let us accept sociology as long as it classifies and does not seek to explain.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,074

Let us not try to convince; apostolate harms good manners.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 191

#1,073

The most ardent passion does not deceive, if it recognizes the inadequacy of its object.
Love is not blind when it loves madly, but when it forgets that even the irreplaceable loved being is only a mysterious first fruits.
Love that does not believe it is justified is not betrayal, but propaedeutic.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,072

Superficiality consists, basically, in hatred of the contradictions of life.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,071

Slandered, like a reactionary.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,070

The intelligent leftist admits that his generation will not construct the perfect society, but trusts in a future generation.
His intelligence discovers his personal impotence, but his leftism prevents him from discovering man’s impotence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,069

The only alternative at the end of this century: eastern barracks—western brothel.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,068

The modern world obliges us to refute foolish ideas, instead of silencing the fools.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 190

#1,067

Concessions are the steps up the gallows.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,066

Liberalism has not fought for the freedom, but for the irresponsibility, of the press.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,065

There was never any happiness so free of threats that we would dare live it again.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,064

Every being lies there, shattered to pieces by its life, and there is no way for our love to pick up all the pieces.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,063

Whoever makes his confession outside the confessional only intends to avoid repenting.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,062

For a society that lives among statistics, to suspect that each unit is a unique person with his own destiny turns out to be troubling and alarming.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,061

The individual declares himself a member of some collective entity, with the aim of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 189

#1,060

The proletariat gravitates to the bourgeois life, just as bodies gravitate to the center of the earth.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,059

The intelligent man tends to fail because he does not dare to believe in the true extent of human stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,058

A peaceful bourgeois existence is the authentic longing of the human heart.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,057

To disrespect individuality is the object of education.
Forgetting such an obvious truth has led, in part, to modern depravity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,056

The contemporary reader smiles when the medieval chronicler speaks of “Roman paladins,” but he remains serious when the Marxist discusses the “Greek bourgeoisie” or “American feudalism.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,055

An educated man is not someone who walks around loaded with answers, but who is capable of asking questions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 188

#1,054

Observing life is too interesting to waste time living it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,053

Let us tremble if we do not sense, in this abject modern world, that with each day our neighbor is less and less our peer.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,052

The experience of a man who “has lived a long life” can usually be reduced to a few trivial anecdotes with which he decorates an incurable stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,051

A fulfilled life is one which delivers to the grave, after long years, an adolescent whom life did not corrupt.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,050

Nature just died in this century.
Only in the art of past centuries do we discover, to our astonishment, that nature is not a simple physics experiment exploited by diligent organisms.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,049

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.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 187

#1,048

The problems of an “underdeveloped” country are the favorite pretext for leftist escapism.
Lacking new merchandise to offer to the European market, the leftist intellectual peddles his faded wares in the third world.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,047

When the philosopher renounces leadership, the journalist puts himself in charge.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,046

Revolutionaries do not destroy anything, in the end, except what made the societies against which they rebel tolerable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,045

Nothing is more dangerous for faith than to frequent the company of believers.
The unbeliever restores our faith.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,044

I am not trying to poison the wells.
But to show that they are poisoned.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,043

Intelligence consists not in finding solutions, but in not losing sight of the problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 186

#1,042

To maintain that “all ideas are respectable” is nothing but pompous nonsense.
Nevertheless, there is no opinion that the support of a sufficient number of imbeciles does not oblige one to put up with.
Let us not disguise our impotence as tolerance.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,041

Intelligent optimism is never faith in progress, but hope in a miracle.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,040

The historian tends to forget that in every era man has no problems except those he believes he has.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,039

Lack of imagination saves a people from many catastrophes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,038

Modern civilization would be committing suicide, if it were truly succeeding in educating man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,037

Values are not citizens of this world, but pilgrims from other heavens.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,036

Man, in order to govern, blindfolds himself with ideologies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 185

#1,035

The imagination is the only place in the world where one can dwell.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,034

Repentant, like a victorious revolutionary.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,033

Treating an inferior with respect and affection is the classic syndrome of the reactionary psychosis.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,032

Egalitarian societies strangle the imagination without even satisfying envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,031

Teaching exempts one from the obligation to learn.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,030

To be an historian requires a rare talent.
To make history all that is needed is a little shamelessness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,029

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,028

Wealth makes life easier; poverty, rhetoric.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,027

To be a revolutionary one must be a little daft; to be a conservative, a little cynical.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 184

#1,026

Society does not become civilized through the stimulus of sonorous sermons, but through the catalytic action of discreet gestures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,025

Values, like the soul, are born in time, but do not belong to it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,024

Useless, like a revolution.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,023

Mankind does not need Christianity so it can construct the future, but so it can confront it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,022

To appeal not to God, but to His justice, fatally leads us to place Him before the tribunal of our prejudices.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,021

Demagogy soon ceases to be an instrument of the democratic ideology in order to become the ideology of democracy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,020

The best palliative for anguish is the conviction that God has a sense of humor.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,019

True revolutions do not begin with their public outbreak, but rather end with it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 183

#1,018

When economic and social revolutions are not simply ideological pretexts for religious crises, after a few years of disorder everything continues as before.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,017

Modern society becomes degraded so quickly that each new morning we contemplate with nostalgia yesterday’s adversary.
The Marxists are already starting to look like the West’s last aristocrats.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,016

The incorrigible political error of the man of good will is to presuppose naively that at every moment it is possible to do what must be done.
Here, where what is necessary is often impossible.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,015

History, if we follow it with the eyes of a partisan, rather than observe it with mere curiosity, makes us swing foolishly back and forth between nostalgia and anger.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,014

To find oneself at the mercy of the people’s whims, thanks to universal suffrage, is what liberalism calls the guarantee of freedom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,013

Perception of reality, today, dies crushed between modern work and modern entertainment.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 182

#1,012

A constant flow of news invades existence today, destroying the silence and peace of humble lives, without abolishing their tedium.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,011

Bureaucracy is not frightening because it paralyzes, but because it functions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,010

It is not impossible that the battalions of clergy at the service of man have nonetheless been infiltrated by a few of God's fifth-columnists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,009

The world would be even more tedious if it were as easy to act as to dream.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,008

Man assures himself that life vilifies him in order to hide the fact that it merely reveals him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,007

Rhetoric does not win battles by itself, but no one wins battles without it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181

#1,006

The democratization of eroticism has at least served to show us that virginity, chastity, purity, are not bitter and morbid old maids, as we believed, but silent vestals of a pure flame.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 181