#2,149

The technician speaks to the layman like an insolent sorcerer.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 350

#2,148

There are ideas that call us and leave, like the beating of wings on a window during the night.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 350

#2,147

The intelligent generalization should bear the decipherable imprint of the particular fact that gives rise to it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 350

#2,146

To cause confusion, ambiguity is more than enough; clarity suffices.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 350

#2,145

Modern man comforts himself by thinking that “everything has a solution.” As if there were no sinister solutions!

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 350

#2,144

Cynicism, like every dogmatic attitude, is too easy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,143

The past appears not to have left any heirs.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,142

From the text we leave in peace only the excess words are removed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,141

Being of “divine right” limited the monarch; the “representative of the people” is the representative of absolute Absolutism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,140

Appetites, greed, passions, do not threaten man’s existence so long as they do not proclaim themselves rights of man, as long as they are not ferments of divinity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,139

Three factors have corrupted, in America, the noble vigor of the Spanish language: the mental solecism of the non-Hispanic immigrant, the child-like eloquence of the black, and the shy, submissive melancholy of the Indian.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,138

The tolling of a monastery bell penetrates into areas of the soul not reached by a sonorous voice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 349

#2,137

The religious sensibility oppressed by the Church takes refuge in strange catacombs.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,136

“Religious instruction” appears at times to have been invented in order to counteract the religious effectiveness of the liturgy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,135

Victorious revolutions have been outbursts of greed. Only defeated revolutions tend to be insurrections of the oppressed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,134

The forces that will ruin a civilization collaborate from its birth with the forces that construct it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,133

One speaks of a “consumer society” in order to conceal—since production is the progressive ideal—that one is dealing with a production society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,132

Power does not corrupt; it frees up latent corruption.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,131

The soul where secret seeds await is not frightened by the rains that are heralded by the rumbling of thunder.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 348

#2,130

The Marxist is beginning to feel uncomfortable because he is already viewed with more curiosity than dread.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,129

Good breeding seems like a fragrance from the 18th century that evaporated.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,128

Impartiality is at times simple insensibility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,127

Only we can poison the wounds inflicted on us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,126

When we make a value judgment let us never invoke authorities.
The value judgment testifies to itself. Every argument degrades it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,125

False elegance is preferable to genuine vulgarity.
The man who dwells in an imaginary palace demands more from himself than the man who is happy with his hovel.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,124

A thought should not expand symmetrically like a formula, but disorderly like a shrub.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 347

#2,123

For the last two centuries ago they have called a “free thinker” the man who believes his prejudices are conclusions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,122

The only precaution is praying on time.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,121

The newspaper collects the previous day’s garbage in order to feed it to us for breakfast.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,120

The society that does not discipline attitudes and gestures renounces social aesthetics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,119

The most pitiful thing about a youth’s “intellectual concerns” are the stupid things with which he relieves them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,118

The importance it attributes to man is the enigma of Christianity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,117

Once we notice who it is that obtains what we desire, we do not care as much to obtain it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,116

Civilized individuals are not products of a civilization, but its cause.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 346

#2,115

We can resist the trivialization that is invading the world by resurrecting God as our rearguard.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 345

#2,114

Dismal, like an urban development project.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 345

#2,113

The greatest disrespect that can be paid to a work of art is to treat it as an expensive object.
No nouveau riche, fortunately, can hang a poem on the walls of his home.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 345

#2,112

Reasons do not move, but arguments descend in time from intellectual class to intellectual class until they reach the ground.
In discourses rotten arguments are consumed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 345

#2,111

What matters to nearly everyone is not being right, but that they be right.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 345

Announcement

Aphorism #2,110 concludes the selection of aphorisms from volume I of Nuevos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1986) which began with #1,628 on August 6.

In two hours aphorisms from volume II of Nuevos Escolios a un Texto Implícito will begin appearing.

#2,110

Happiness walks barefoot.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,109

A good painting cuts short the art critic’s lyricism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,108

In the last corner of the labyrinth of the soul grunts a frightened ape.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,107

The amateur whom the professionals allow onto the track often wins the race.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,106

An epoch is not its ideas, nor its events, but its elusive accent.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,105

Since the 18th century discovered “sensibility,” the serious philosophical task has consisted in isolating in it specific capacities for perception which are confused with passive psychological states.
Ethical consciousness, aesthetic consciousness, religious consciousness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,104

From the 18th century 20th-century man seems to have inherited only his dryness of soul, and from the 19th century only his rhetoric.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 341

#2,103

Relativism is the solution of one who is incapable of putting things in order.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,102

Transcendence is the inaccessible region to which aspire innumerable truncated straight lines.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,101

The sciences, particularly the social sciences, are depositing successive strata of barbarisms on top of literature.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,100

A great artist is obviously one who is disconcerting.
But a great artist is not one who plans on being disconcerting, but one who begins by disconcerting himself.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,099

What disconcerts us momentarily cures our stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,098

Even the greatest fool experiences nights during which his defenses against the truth waver.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,097

The fool does not renounce an error unless it goes out of fashion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 340

#2,096

To understand a text, one must walk around it slowly, since no one gets in except through invisible posterns.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,095

The pleasure with which we walk down the trail that a system opens up for us in the woods makes us forget that on each side the forest remains intact.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,094

Public gestures ought to be regulated by the strictest formalism in order to prevent that feigned spontaneity that so pleases the fool.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,093

Understanding tends to consist of falsifying what is apparently understood, by reducing it to terms that are supposedly intelligible because they agree with our prejudices at the moment.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,092

When the theologian explains the reason for some act of God, the listener wavers between indignation and laughter.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,091

Sensibility does not project an image on its object, but a light.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 339

#2,090

Modernism ingeniously finds a way not to present its theology directly, but rather through profane notions that imply it.
It avoids announcing to man his divinity, but proposes goals that only a god could reach, or rather proclaims that the essence of man has rights which assume he is divine.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 338

#2,089

Democratic atheism does not dispute the existence of God, but rather His identity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 338

#2,088

Vulgarity colonized the earth.
Its weapons have been the television, the radio, the press.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 338

#2,087

An irritating man is one who claims that the solution he adopts has been reached in an impersonal way, the one who does not want to take responsibility for what he adopts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 338

#2,086

The voice of God does not echo today among craggy peaks; it thunders among the percentages in public opinion polls.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 338

#2,085

Whoever does not simultaneously play upon the board of maximum generality and the board of maximum particularity knows nothing of the game of ideas.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,084

The Catholic apologist rarely distinguishes between what must be rejected with respect and what must be crushed with contempt.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,083

The radical negation of religion is the most dogmatic of religious positions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,082

Even in opposition to the intellectual language of a time one cannot help but write in it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,081

The phenomenon of the degradation of the people into rabble is the same, no matter whether it is into poor rabble or rich rabble.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,080

When the business acumen of some exploits the cultural sanctimoniousness of others, one says that culture is spreading.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 337

#2,079

Every political solution limps, but some limp with grace.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,078

No problem exists which can be understood outside its historical context, nor which can be completely reduced to it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,077

Modern man imagines that it is sufficient to open the windows in order to cure the soul’s infection, that it is not necessary to clear out the trash.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,076

Intelligence should battle without respite against the sclerosis of its findings.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,075

By overcoming the notion of cyclical history, Christianity did not discover the meaning of history; it merely emphasized the irreplaceable importance of the irreplaceable individual.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,074

We all have a key to the door that opens onto the luminous and noble peace of the desert.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,073

The true reader clings to the text he reads like a shipwrecked man to a floating plank.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 336

#2,072

The impossibility of finding solutions teaches us that we should devote ourselves to ennobling the problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,071

Man’s dreams are not impossible, nor blameworthy; it is impossible and blameworthy for man to believe that he is capable of satisfying them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,070

“People” is the sum of the defects of the people.
The rest is campaign rhetoric.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,069

Every society eventually bursts when envy expands too far.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,068

The city imagined by every utopian is always tacky—beginning with that of the Apocalypse.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,067

What the economist calls the “inflation of costs” is an outbreak of greed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,066

Whoever dares to ask that the moment stop and time suspend its flight surrenders himself to God; whoever celebrates future harmonies sells himself to the devil.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 335

#2,065

The atheist devotes himself less to proving that God does not exist than to forbidding Him to exist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,064

When events mistreat him, the pessimist invokes rights.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,063

The purpose of sex education is to make it easier to learn sexual perversions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,062

The number of censurable things is greatly reduced when one ceases to covet.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,061

The classical languages have educational value because they are safe from the vulgarity with which modern life corrupts the languages that are in use.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,060

The carelessness with which contemporary humanity is squandering its goods appears to indicate that it does not expect to have descendants.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,059

Man speaks of the relativity of truth because he calls his innumerable errors truths.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,058

Every episode of a revolution needs a partisan to relate it and an adversary to explain it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 334

#2,057

Dialogue does not consist of intelligences discussing with each other but of vanities confronting each other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,056

We should not be frightened: what we admire does not die.
Nor be delighted: neither does what we detest.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,055

A modern father is one who is ready to make financial sacrifices so that his children will not prolong his life, replace him, or imitate him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,054

The nationalist vanity of the citizen of an important country is the most amusing, since the difference between the citizen and his country is greater there.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,053

After seeing work exploit and demolish the world, laziness seems like the mother of the virtues.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,052

To learn that the most valuable goods are the least rare requires a long apprenticeship.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 333

#2,051

To liberate man is to subject him to greed and sex.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,050

Popular suffrage is less absurd today than yesterday: not because the majorities are more cultured, but because the minorities are less so.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

Feast of St. Teresa of Ávila

One can say Alexander, or Dante, or Pascal, or Goethe, and one can say simultaneously: St. Teresa.

Notas, p. 450

#2,049

Compassion is the best excuse for envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,048

If the power of an image depended on the type of memories that it invokes according to the psychoanalyst, any image would provoke not nostalgia but laughter.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,047

To teach literature is to teach the pupil to believe that he admires what he does not admire.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,046

Today the individual must gradually reconstruct inside himself the civilized universe that is disappearing around him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,045

The critical analysis practiced by contemporary criticism is unreadable and makes the work it analyzes unreadable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,044

With the exception of the reactionary, today we only meet candidates for [positions as] administrators of modern society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 332

#2,043

The circus factions were not political parties; today’s political parties are circus factions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,042

The contemporary thinker leads us through a labyrinth of concepts to a public place.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,041

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,040

To the petulant subjectivism of the man who believes he is the measure [of all things] is opposed the humble subjectivism of the man who refuses to be an echo.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,039

The conventional is not necessarily an aesthetic defect, since it is merely a sociological trait.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,038

Let us limit our assertions about man to specifications about strata of individuals.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,037

The people does not convert to the religion preached by a militant minority, but to the one imposed by a militant minority. Christianity and Islam knew it; Communism knows it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 331

#2,036

Faith is not a conviction we ought to defend, but a conviction we do not succeed in defending ourselves against.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,035

Theoretical affability toward vice is not a proof of liberality and elegance, but of vulgarity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,034

Apostolate perverts in two ways: by inducing one either to mitigate in order to lull to sleep, or to exaggerate in order to arouse.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,033

It has taken Christian philosophers work to take sin seriously, that is to say: to see that it transcends ethical phenomena.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,032

Whoever does not move among works of art as if among dangerous animals does not know among what he moves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,031

In order to oppress the people, it is necessary to suppress in the name of the people that which stands out from the people.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,030

The left never attributes its failure to a mistaken diagnosis but to the perversity of events.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,029

When we understand what those who seemed to understand [really] understood, we are dumbfounded.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 330

#2,028

The titanism of modern art begins with the heroic titanism of Michelangelo and concludes with the cartoonish titanism of Picasso.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,027

It is as stupid to “have faith” (without knowing in whom) as to yearn for “a faith” (without knowing which one).

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,026

By means of the notion of “cultural evolution,” the democratic anthropologist tries to avoid questions of biology.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,025

The democrat comforts himself with the generosity of the program over the magnitude of the disasters it produces.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,024

National histories have all finally flowed into a degenerate occidentalism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,023

We are witnesses today to an exuberant proliferation of non-European crowds, but nowhere do any new, yellow, brown, or black civilizations arise.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 329

#2,022

The devil is the patron of abstract art, because to represent is to submit.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,021

Collective pretentiousness comes to be more revolting than individual pretentiousness. Patriotism should be mute.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,020

Formal instruction does not cure foolishness; it arms it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,019

Our spiritual inheritance is so opulent that today an astute fool has only to exploit it in order to seem more intelligent to a slow-witted fool than an intelligent man from yesterday.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,018

The alleged “laws of sociology” are more or less extensively documented historical facts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,017

Whoever wants to know what the serious objections to Christianity are should ask us.
The unbeliever makes only stupid objections.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,016

The only man who should speak of wealth or power is one who did not extend his hand when they were within his reach.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 328

#2,015

Humanity usually locates the pain where the injury is not, the sin where the fault is not.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,014

The scent of the sin of pride attracts man like blood attracts a wild beast.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,013

The larger a democratic country is, the more mediocre its rulers must be: they are elected by more people.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,012

Every society is born with enemies who accompany it in silence until they ambush it at night and slit its throat.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,011

The man who does not claim to have panaceas does not become obliged to answer questions to which he has no answers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,010

Man goes out hunting less for truths than for ways of getting out.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,009

A writer should know that only a few of those who look at him will actually see him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 327

#2,008

For the true results of a prior revolution, let us consult the revolutionaries who are preparing the next one.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,007

Authentic superiority is intolerable for the fool.
Its simulacra, on the other hand, fascinate him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,006

Whoever believes he is original is just ignorant.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,005

Even for Buddhist compassion, the individual is only a shadow that vanishes.
The dignity of the individual is a Christian cast made out of Greek clay.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,004

The professional never admits that in the science he practices insignificant truths abound.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,003

Contemporary political parties have ended up converging even in their rhetoric.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,002

If one only aspires to provide a growing number of persons with a growing number of goods, without worrying about the quality of the persons, or of the goods, then capitalism is the perfect solution.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 326

#2,001

A paean to justice intoxicates us, because it seems to us to be an apology for the passion, just or unjust, which blinds us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#2,000

The compassion we display to some helps us to justify the envy which others awaken in us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#1,999

Cowed by the vehemence with which the artist reminds him of his famous follies, the critic walks with cautious steps, fearing that patent ugliness might end up being unusual beauty.
It is not in order to admire that one requires courage today; it is in order to censure.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#1,998

The emancipated intellectual shares with his contemporaries the “personal taste” he prides himself on.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#1,997

The most shameless spectacle is that of the voluptuous throbbing with which a crowd listens to the orator who adores it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#1,996

At the thought of the current Church (clergy, liturgy, theology), an old Catholic first becomes indignant, then astonished, and finally he just bursts out in laughter.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 325

#1,995

As the intellectual apparatus of our contemporaries is only sensitive to ideas of a frequency authorized by modern dogmas, astute democracies have understood the superfluity of censorship.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,994

The pure reactionary is not a dreamer of abolished pasts, but a hunter of sacred shades on the eternal hills.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,993

Reforms are the entrance ramps to revolutions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,992

We search in vain for the explanation of certain things because we should search for the explanation of their opposites.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,991

Today they are trying to make “to pardon” mean to deny that an offense was committed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,990

The modern mentality is ignorant of the fact that on the meta-economic level of the economy demand increases with supply, that hunger there does not increase with lack but with abundance, that appetite is irritated there by growing satiety.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 324

#1,989

The homogeneity of a society increases with the number of its members.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,988

Austerity, resignation, modesty, according to modern dogma, are forms of ideological enslavement.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,987

National histories are interesting until the country “modernizes.”
After that statistics are enough.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,986

Without economic concerns the fool dies from boredom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,985

Conflicts rarely break out over the true disagreements.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,984

Let us deceive no one: the devil can deliver the material goods he promises.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,983

Wealth is hopelessly demoralizing when no political function is attached to it.
Even plutocracy is preferable to irresponsible riches.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 323

#1,982

To hope that the growing vulnerability of a world increasingly integrated by technology will not demand a total despotism is mere foolishness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,981

Between the dictatorship of technology and the technology of dictatorship, man no longer finds a crack through which he can slip away.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,980

A reactionary author’s readers never know whether they should clap enthusiastically or boo furiously.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,979

Dictatorship is the technification of politics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,978

The authentic individual cannot be added up; he can only be placed in order.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,977

Each new generation, in the last two centuries, ends up looking with nostalgia on that which appeared abominable to the previous generation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,976

Liberalism proclaims the right of the individual to degrade oneself, provided one’s degradation does not impede the degradation of one’s neighbor.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 322

#1,975

In well-born souls norms become naturalized.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,974

Liberty is the right to be different; equality is a ban on being different.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,973

Only few admire without worrying whether their admiration discredits or recommends them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,972

The contemporary Catholic looks upon “scientific ideas” with a stupid reverence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,971

Individualism proclaims differences but promotes similarities.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,970

In the end we only defend and attack religious positions with zeal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,969

Compassion, in this century, is an ideological weapon.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,968

Individualism is not the antithesis of totalitarianism but a condition of it.
Totalitarianism and hierarchy, on the other hand, are terminal positions of contrary movements.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 321

#1,967

It is always amusing to see experts suffer a setback.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 320

#1,966

What is called progress are preparations for a catastrophe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 320

#1,965

Socialism arose as nostalgia for the social unity destroyed by bourgeois atomism.
But it did not understand that social unity is not the totalitarian condensing of individuals, but the systematic totality of a hierarchy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 320

#1,964

The only man who saves himself from intellectual vulgarity is the man who ignores what it is fashionable to know.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 320