#2,941

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 469

#2,925

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 Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 467

#2,914

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 Implícito: Selección, p. 465

#2,895

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 463

#2,883

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 un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 461

#2,871

They call crowning mediocre men “promoting culture.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 460

#2,777

Cultural rhetoric today replaces patriotic rhetoric, in the effusive expectorations of fools.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 446

#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

#2,631

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

#2,519

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 405

#2,491

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 401

#2,412

Museums are the tourist’s punishment.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 389

#2,304

The cultural rickets of our time is a result of the industrialization of culture.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 374

#2,245

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 Implícito: Selección, p. 365

#2,233

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 artificial interests.
The semi-cultured man is the good fortune of the merchant of “culture.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 362

#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

#1,869

For a cultural continuity to be broken, the destruction of certain institutions is enough, but when the soul softens, the survival of those very same institutions is not enough to prevent it from being broken.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 307

#1,811

Cultures dry out when their religious ingredients evaporate.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 298

#1,766

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

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 292

#1,762

Moribund cultures try to survive by imitating themselves systematically or by radically innovating.
Spiritual health lies, on the contrary, in prolonging without imitating and in innovating without abolishing.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 291