Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

Except in a few countries, trying to “promote culture” while recommending the reading of “national authors” is a contradictory endeavor. Esc...

It is not in the hands of popular majorities where power is most easily perverted; it is in the hands of the semi-educated. Escolios a un Te...

The peddlers of cultural objects would not be annoying if they did not sell them with the rhetoric of an apostle. Escolios a un Texto Implíc...

It is fine to demand that the imbecile respect arts, letters, philosophy, the sciences, but let him respect them in silence. Escolios a un T...

In culture which is bought there are many false notes; the only culture that never goes out of tune is that which is inherited. Escolios a u...

They call crowning mediocre men “promoting culture.” Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 460

Cultural rhetoric today replaces patriotic rhetoric, in the effusive expectorations of fools. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. ...

When one is confronted by diverse “cultures,” there are two symmetrically erroneous attitudes: to admit only one cultural standard, and to g...

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

To become cultivated is to learn that a particular class of questions is meaningless. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 405

Not the man who has disciplined only his intelligence is cultivated, but rather the man who also disciplines the movements of his soul and e...

Museums are the tourist’s punishment. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 389

The cultural rickets of our time is a result of the industrialization of culture. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 374

The most dangerous illiteracy is not that of a man who disrespects all books, but that of a man who respects them all. Escolios a un Texto I...

The cultured man and the simple man do not take an interest in anything but what spontaneously attracts them; the semi-cultured man only has...

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

For a cultural continuity to be broken, the destruction of certain institutions is enough, but when the soul softens, the survival of those ...

Cultures dry out when their religious ingredients evaporate. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección , p. 298

The distances between nations, social classes, cultures, and races, are a little thing. The fault line runs between the plebeian mind and t...

Moribund cultures try to survive by imitating themselves systematically or by radically innovating. Spiritual health lies, on the contrary,...