Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

The people that awakes, first shouts, then gets drunk, pillages, [and] murders, and later goes back to sleep. Escolios a un Texto Implícito:...

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

The bourgeoisie, in the feudal framework, settles in small urban centers where it becomes structured and civilized. With the break-up of thi...

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

Collective pretentiousness comes to be more revolting than individual pretentiousness. Patriotism should be mute. Escolios a un Texto Implíc...

Literary nationalism selects its themes with the eyes of a tourist. It sees nothing of its land but the exotic. Escolios a un Texto Implíci...

Let us beware of discourse where the adjective “natural” without quotation marks abounds: somebody is deceiving himself, or wants to deceive...

That patriotism which is not a carnal adhesion to specific landscapes, is rhetoric designed by semi-educated men to spur the illiterate on t...

The “fatherland,” without any nationalistic bombast, is only the area which an individual contemplates around him after having climbed a hil...

The appearance of nationalism in any nation indicates that its originality is in its death throes. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección ...

When we hear the final chords of a national anthem, we know with certainty that someone has just said something stupid. Escolios a un Texto ...

The three hypostases of egoism are: individualism, nationalism, collectivism. The democratic trinity. Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selecc...

Sometimes the crime to be committed is so horrible that the nation is not a good enough pretext and it is necessary to invoke humanity. Esco...

Let us not speak badly of nationalism. Without the virulence of nationalism, Europe and the world would already be ruled by a technical, rat...

A nation’s soul is born from an historical event, matures by accepting its destiny, and dies when it admires itself and imitates itself. Esc...