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Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Quotes

1909–1999 Austria

Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (31 July 1909 – 26 May 1999) was an Austrian Catholic nobleman and socio-political theorist.

Austria
Historians
Journalists
Philosophers

Also known as: The Menace of the Herd

Random Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn quote

45 quotes

Bodies are mutually attracted by nearness, knowledge, and pleasure but souls by distance, mystery, and suffering.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

The Romantic may be alone, but he is never lonely, and that because of his knowledge of the presence of God.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

'Welfare State' is a misnomer, for every state must care for the common good.

The Timeless Christian (1969)

Patriotism, not nationalism, should inspire the citizen.

Leftism Revisited (1990)

Generosity is a virtue more frequently found in the small top layers than among the masses. After all, it takes intelligence to suspect that generosity very often pays while egotism does not.

Monarchy and War (2000)

The feeling of inequality begins now to be a burning pain, snobism lifts its ugly head, the element of general human competition gains headway in every phase of life.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory.

Liberty or Equality (1952)

There is hierarchy as well as function in every organism. One man may be more important than another just as the eye is more important than the finger.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

The "happy end" of the cheap, popular novels and the films is nothing but the outcome of the supposition that the human drama finds its ultimate conclusion here on earth.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Education is, after all, something thoroughly "aristocratic" in the intellectual sense.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

There is no such thing as a historical fatality; there is only a historical nemesis which punishes those who have hesitated to act when action was still possible.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly.

The Roots of Anticapitalism (1972)

America is not a democracy. We are not fighting for democracy. We fight for liberty.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

The automatic desire for more power is only apparent in children, primitives, people of low character or intellect; for the superior man, power is like a cross, duty a burden, responsibility an obligation.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Europe's rise is written in the terms of Christianity and Monarchy, Europe's decay in the terms of Republicanism, "Progressivism," and Godlessness.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Neither are the progressivists, in present-day America, revolutionaries or enemies of the order. Being "radical" or "progressive" they merely want to continue with greater speed and determination along the established, wrong trail.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Liberty is the ideal of aristocracy, just as equality stands for the bourgeoisie and fraternity for the peasantry. One can combine liberty with fraternity but neither of them with equality.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Ochlocracy is revolution in permanence.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

True herdism, elevated from the status of a low and contemptible instinct to the supreme level of an ideology, of a Weltanschauung, has become a tremendous force in our modern culture and civilization.

The Menace of the Herd (1943)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.