Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (d. 1994) was a radical critic of modernity. This account posts his aphorisms, translated into English.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Originality is not something that is sought, but something that is found.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Even the least foolish usually do not know the conditions of what they wish for and the consequences of what they admit.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

A noble society does not wait for catastrophes to discipline it before it disciplines itself.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Where the customs and the laws permit everyone to aspire to everything, everyone lives a frustrated life, no matter what position he comes to occupy.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Allusion is the only way to express what is intimate without distorting it.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

To be a reactionary is to understand that man is a problem without a human solution.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

The rich man, in capitalist society, does not know how to put money to its best use: so that he does not have to think about it.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Society’s most serious ailments usually come from the imprudence with which they are treated.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Their accommodations to practice leave nothing of political theories but a simple memory.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

The sciences tend to become bureaucratic, just like everything else.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Very few carry themselves with the discretion befitting their insignificance.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

To accuse the aphorism of expressing only part of the truth is tantamount to supposing that a verbose discourse can express all of it.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

In order to live peacefully with one’s neighbor, there is nothing better than not having a single postulate in common.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

The senile sclerosis of intelligence does not consist in the inability to change ideas, but in the inability to change the level at which we have them.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

The rich man is not disconcerted by anyone except by someone who does not envy him.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Capitalism is the monstrous distortion of private property by liberal democracy.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Man does not do the worst things unless he declares that his conscience obliges him to do them.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Earth will never be a paradise, but it could perhaps be prevented from coming closer and closer to being a vulgar imitation of hell.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

The worst rhetoric is cultivated in democratic nations, where all formalism must pretend to be a spontaneous and sincere attitude.

Monarchical rhetoric is a formalism that recognizes and admits what it is, like etiquette.

[Nicolás Gómez Dávila @QuothDavila]

Not only the intellect, in some men the soul itself brays.