#2,700

Mechanization is stultifying because it makes man believe that he lives in an intelligible universe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 435

#2,699

Nothing arouses more mutual disdain than a difference in pastimes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,698

Asking the state to do what only society should do is the error of the left.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,697

Sincerity, unless it is in a sacramental confession, is a factor leading to demoralization.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,696

Each day modern man knows the world more and man less.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,695

The imbecile is betrayed less by what he says than by his diction.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,694

Only to defend our secondary convictions do we possess abundant arguments.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,693

An “explanation” consists in the end in assimilating a strange mystery to a familiar mystery.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,692

I have no pretensions to originality: the commonplace, if it is old, will do for me.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 434

#2,691

A class-conscious proletariat, in Marxist vocabulary, means a people that has converted to bourgeois ideals.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,690

The basic problems of an age have never been the theme of its great literary works.
Only ephemeral literature is an “expression of society.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,689

To believe that an obvious truth, clearly expressed, should be convincing, is no more than a naïve prejudice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,688

The modern mentality is the child of human pride puffed up by commercial advertising.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,687

Let us be careful not to call accepting what degrades us without any resistance “accepting life.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,686

Love uses the vocabulary of sex to write a text unintelligible to sex alone.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,685

In the social sciences, one should only generalize in order to individualize better.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 433

#2,684

Life is a daily struggle against one’s own stupidity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,683

Interesting autobiographies would be plentiful if writing the truth were not an aesthetic problem.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,682

Nothing is so important that it does not matter how it is written.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,681

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,680

Economic claims, hostility between social classes, religious differences, tend to be mere pretexts for an instinctive appetite for conflict.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,679

The modern machine becomes more complex every day, and every day modern man becomes more elemental.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,678

There are certain types of ignorance that enrich the mind and certain types of knowledge that impoverish it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,677

Without literary talent the historian inevitably falsifies history.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,676

History exhibits too many useless corpses for any finality to be attributed to it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,675

To give an aged truth its freshness back, it is enough to oppose it to a new error.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,674

The temptation for the churchman is to carry the waters of religion in the sieve of theology.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,673

When one is confronted by diverse “cultures,” there are two symmetrically erroneous attitudes: to admit only one cultural standard, and to grant all standards the same rank.
Neither the overweening imperialism of the European historian of yesterday, nor the shameful relativism of the European historian of today.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,672

There is some collusion between skepticism and faith: both undermine human presumptuousness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,671

Good taste that has been learned ends up being of worse taste than spontaneous bad taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 431

#2,670

Only the defeated come to possess sound ideas about the nature of things.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,669

After solving a problem, humanity imagines that it finds in analogous solutions the key to all problems.
Every authentic solution brings in its wake a train of grotesque solutions.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,668

We can build nothing upon the goodness of man, but we can only build with it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,667

Until the end of the 18th century, what man added to nature increased its beauty.
Since then, what he adds destroys it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,666

The root of reactionary thought is not distrust of reason but distrust of the will.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,665

“Modern art” still seems alive because it has not been replaced, not because it has not died.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,664

The world becomes filled with contradictions when we forget that things have ranks.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 430

#2,663

To criticize a present in the name of a past can be futile, but to have criticized it in the name of a future can turn out to be risible when that future arrives.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,662

A greater capacity for killing is the criterion of “progress” between two peoples or two epochs.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,661

Few ideas do not turn pale before a fixed glare.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,660

When the tyrant is the anonymous law, modern man believes he is free.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,659

“Liberties” are social precincts in which the individual can move without any coercion; “Liberty,” on the other hand, is a metaphysical principle in whose name a sect seeks to impose its ideals of conduct on everyone else.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,658

The theses that the Marxist “refutes” come back to life unscathed behind his back.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,657

Where even the last vestige of feudal ties disappears, the increasing social isolation of the individual and his increasing helplessness fuse him into a totalitarian mass.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 429

#2,656

Even when it cannot be an act of reason, an option should be an act of the intelligence.
There are no compellingly demonstrable options, but there are stupid options.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,655

There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,654

It is not the vague notion of “service” that deserves respect, but the concrete notion of “servant.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,653

Unless circumstances constrain him, there is no radically leftist Jew.
The people that discovered divine absolutism does not make deals with the absolutism of man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,652

Freedom intoxicates man as a symbol of independence from God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,651

The only goals which it has occurred to the philosopher to set for human history are all tedious or sinister.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 428

#2,650

Of the great philosopher, only his good ideas survive; of the inferior philosopher, only his errors remain afloat.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,649

Without a previous career as an historian, no one should be allowed to specialize in the social sciences.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,648

Let us not confuse the specific stratum of mystery with the stratum of the unexplainable.
For it might be merely the stratum of the unexplained.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,647

The majority of civilizations have not passed on anything more than a stratum of detritus between two strata of ashes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,646

The two poles are the individual and God; the two antagonists are God and Man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,645

The book that does not scandalize the expert a little has no reason to exist.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,644

The permanent possibility of initiating causal series is what we call a person.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,643

Subjectivism is the guarantee that man invents for himself when he stops believing in God.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 427

#2,642

When it finishes its “ascent,” humanity will find tedium waiting for it, seated on the highest peak.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,641

The most notorious thing about every modern undertaking is the discrepancy between the immensity and complexity of the technical apparatus and the insignificance of the final product.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,640

Classical Castilian means, with a few exceptions, an unreadable book.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,639

The atomization of society derives from the modern division of labor: where nobody knows specifically for whom he works, nor who specifically works for him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,638

Every strict classification of an historical event distorts it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,637

Modern man is ignorant of the positive quality of silence.
He does not know that there are many things of which one cannot speak without automatically disfiguring them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,636

The only indices of civilization are the clarity, lucidity, order, good manners of everyday prose.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 426

#2,635

A Communist society is soon intellectually paralyzed by reciprocal terrorism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,634

Our neighbor irritates us because he seems to us like a parody of our own defects.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,633

It is not where mythological allusions disappear that the Greek imprint is wiped away; it is where the limits of the human are forgotten.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,632

A valiant and daring thought is one that does not avoid the commonplace.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,631

Man compensates for the solidity of the structures he erects with the fragility of the foundations upon which he builds them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,630

Contemporary man admires only hysterical texts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 425

#2,629

Nothing makes clearer the limits of science than the scientist’s opinions about any topic that is not strictly related to his profession.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,628

Common sense is the paternal house to which philosophy returns, in cycles, feeble and emaciated.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,627

Solutions in philosophy are the disguise of new problems.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,626

Philosophers tend to be more influential because of what they seem to have said rather than because of what they really said.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,625

One can only support the weight of this world while on one’s knees.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,624

Only the contemplation of the immediate saves us from tedium in this incomprehensible universe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,623

The existence of a work of art demonstrates that the world has meaning.
Even when it does not say what that meaning is.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 424

#2,622

Ages of sexual liberation reduce to a few spasmodic shouts the rich modulations of human sensuality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,621

All metaphysics must work with metaphors, and almost all end up only working on metaphors.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,620

A good book from yesterday does not seem bad except to the ignoramus; on the other hand, a mediocre book from today can seem good even to a cultivated man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,619

Everything that is physically possible soon seems morally plausible to modern man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,618

Each one of a science’s successive orthodoxies appears to be the definitive truth to the disciple.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,617

Reactionary texts appear obsolete to contemporaries and surprisingly relevant to posterity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,616

Law is the easiest method of exercising tyranny.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,615

Only the unexpected fully satisfies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 423

#2,614

Replacing the concrete sense perception of the object with its abstract intellectual construction makes man gain the world and lose his soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,613

The common man lives among phantasms; only the recluse moves among realities.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,612

There are many who believe they are God’s enemies but only manage to become the sacristan’s enemies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,611

To want Christianity not to make absurd demands is to ask it to renounce the demands that move our heart.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,610

“To belong to a generation,” rather than a necessity, is a decision made by gregarious minds.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,609

The liberal is always mistaken because he does not distinguish between the consequences he attributes to his intentions and the consequences his intentions effectively include.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,608

In order to renew, it is not necessary to contradict; it is enough to make profounder.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 422

#2,607

We should only encourage someone to do something that is worth doing because it is worth it.
Goodness for goodness’s sake, truth for truth’s sake, art for art’s sake.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,606

The habitual factors of history are not enough to explain the apparition of new collective mentalities.
It is advisable to introduce into history the mysterious notion of mutation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,605

Whoever lives long years is present at the defeat of his cause.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,604

What is difficult is not to believe or to doubt—at any time—but to measure the exact proportion of our authentic faith or our authentic doubt.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,603

A decision that is not a little crazy does not deserve respect.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,602

The only superiority not in danger of being eclipsed by a new superiority is that of style.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 421

#2,601

The history of literary genres admits of sociological explanations.
The history of works of literature does not.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,600

When we aim high, there is no public capable of knowing whether we hit our target.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,599

Someone who has been defeated should not console himself with the possible retaliations of history, but with the patent excellence of his cause.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,598

We reactionaries provide idiots the pleasure of feeling like daring avant-garde thinkers.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,597

Let us not give stupid opinions the pleasure of scandalizing us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,596

Where there are no vestiges of old Christian charity, even the purest courtesy is somewhat cold, hypocritical, hard.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,595

Modern man has no interior life: hardly even internal conflicts.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 420

#2,594

History seems to come down to two alternating periods: a sudden religious experience that propagates a new human type, [and] the slow process of dismantling that type.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,593

When the intellectual climate where something occurs is lacking in originality, the occurrence only has interest for those whom it concerns physically.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,592

We do not always distinguish what harms our delicate nature from what provokes our envy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,591

The relativity of taste is an excuse adopted by ages that have bad taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,590

The writer who does not insist on convincing us wastes less of our time, and sometimes even convinces us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,589

The dangerous idea is not the false one, but the partially correct one.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,588

The difference between “organic” and “mechanical,” in social facts, is a moral one: the “organic” is the result of innumerable humble acts; the “mechanical” is the result of a decisive act of pride.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 419

#2,587

It is customary to proclaim rights in order to be able to violate duties.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,586

Solitude teaches us to be more intellectually honest, but it induces us to be less intellectually courteous.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,585

Verisimilitude is the temptation into which the amateur historian most easily falls.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,584

It is in reiterating the old commonplaces that the work of civilization, strictly speaking, consists.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,583

The political errors that could most obviously be avoided are those which are most frequently committed.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,582

The external adversary is less the enemy of a civilization than is internal attrition.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,581

The modern writer forgets that only the allusion to the gestures of love captures its essence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 418

#2,580

The distinction between the scientific use and the emotional use of language is not scientific but emotional.
It is used to discredit theses that make modern man uncomfortable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,579

In important matters, it is not possible to demonstrate, only to show.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,578

The Marxist’s mind fossilizes with time; the leftist’s becomes soft and spongy.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,577

The democrat changes his method in the social sciences when some conclusion makes him uncomfortable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,576

The aesthetic impossibilities of an age stem not from social factors, but from internal censors.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,575

Truths do not contradict each other except when they fall out of order.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

Announcement

This marks the end of the selections from Nuevos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1986).

Translations of selected aphorisms from Sucesivos Escolios a un Texto Implícito (1992) will begin appearing tomorrow.

#2,574

The only pretension I have is that of not having written a linear book, but a concentric book.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,573

Concessions to the adversary fill the imbecile with admiration.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,572

The two most insufferable types of rhetoric are religious rhetoric and the rhetoric of art criticism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,571

When he is stripped of the Christian tunic and the classical toga, there is nothing left of the European but a pale-skinned barbarian.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,570

From behind the “will of all” the “general will” pokes its head out.
A “will” that is not volition, in reality, but a program. The program of a party.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,569

An outlandish idea becomes ridiculous when several people share it.
Either one walks with everybody, or one walks alone.
One should never walk in a group.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 412

#2,568

What ceases to be thought qualitatively so as to be thought quantitatively ceases to be thought significantly.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 412

#2,567

Maturity consists in walking through well-trodden paths with an unmistakable step.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 412

#2,566

In solitude man recovers strength to live.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 412

#2,565

Periods of political stability are periods of religious stability.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 412

#2,564

Decadence makes many things lovable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,563

The opposite of the absurd is not reason but happiness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,562

Every intelligence reaches a point where it believes it is walking without advancing a step.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,561

We usually share with our predecessors more opinions than ways of reaching them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,560

One must appreciate commonplaces and despise fashionable places.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,559

In ages of complete freedom, indifference to the truth grows so much that nobody makes the effort to confirm a truth or to refute it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,558

People admire the man who does not complain of his troubles, because it exempts them from the duty of feeling sorry for him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,557

A non-economic problem does not appear worthy, in our time, of the attention of a serious citizen.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 411

#2,556

Nothing more ominous than the 19th century’s enthusiasm for the “unity,” the “solidarity,” the “unanimity” of the human race.
Sentimental sketches of contemporary totalitarianism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,555

Christianity completes paganism by adding confidence in God to fear of the divine.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,554

The continuous discourse tends to conceal the breaks within being.
The fragment is the expression of honest thought.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,553

Each day people are born more suitable for being boxed into statistics.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,552

Rationalizing dogma, relaxing morality, simplifying the rite, do not make it easier for the unbeliever to approach [the Church], but rather [for the Church] to approach the unbeliever.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,551

A cloud of incense is worth a thousand sermons.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,550

Ritualism is the discreet guardian of spirituality.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 410

#2,549

An overpopulated country is one where every citizen is practically anonymous.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,548

An excess of laws emasculates.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,547

The world is not in such bad shape, considering the men who rule it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,546

Justified pride is accompanied by profound humility.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,545

Religious thought does not go forward, like scientific thought, but rather goes deeper.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,544

Only goodness and beauty do not require limits.
Nothing is too beautiful or too good.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,543

I appreciate the pedestrian gait of certain poetry, but I prefer the hard rhythm of where song is raised.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 409

#2,542

The civilizing effect of works of art is due less to the aesthetic value than to the ethic of aesthetic work.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,541

Arts and letters soon become sterile where the practice of them gives one wealth and the admiration of them prestige.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,540

History charges a high price for the destruction of one if its rare successes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,539

Humanizing humanity again will not be an easy task after this long orgy of divinity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,538

Political parties, in democracies, have the function of enlisting citizens so that the political class can direct them as it pleases.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,537

In aesthetics as well, one only reaches heaven by the uneven road and through the narrow gate.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,536

The one constant in every technological enterprise is its curve of success: rapid initial rise, subsequent horizontal line, gradual fall until unsuspected depths of failure.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,535

Sometimes only humiliations leave ajar for humanity the gates of wisdom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,534

In the society that is starting to take shape, not even the enthusiastic collaboration of the sodomite and the lesbian will save us from boredom.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,533

Despite what is taught today, easy sex does not solve every problem.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,532

Humanity is not cured of its diseases except by means of catastrophes that decimate it.
Man has never known how to renounce at the right time.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,531

The liberation promised by every invention ends with the growing submission of the man who adopts it to the man who manufactures it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,530

Most of the things man “needs” are not necessary to him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,529

Stupidities spread at the speed of light.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 407

#2,528

Hell is the place where man finds all his plans realized.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,527

Each one of man’s new conquests is the new plague that punishes his pride.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,526

Ethics and aesthetics, when divorced, each submit more readily to man’s whims.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,525

Man pays for the powers he acquires over the world by giving up the meaning of things.
To construct the theory of wind one must renounce the mystery of a whirlwind of dry leaves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,524

The “common reader” is as rare as common sense.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,523

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.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 406

#2,522

As it is unable to explain that consciousness which creates it, science, when it finishes explaining everything, will not have explained anything.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,521

The artlessness with which the simple resign themselves puts to shame our fits of presumptuousness.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,520

Those who confess to us that they have doubts about the immortality of the soul appear to believe we have an interest in their soul being immortal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,519

To become cultivated is to learn that a particular class of questions is meaningless.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,518

Words arrive one day in the hands of a patient writer like flocks of doves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,517

Pleasures abound as long as we do not confuse their ranks.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,516

One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of imbeciles, if religion’s case were not just as serious.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405