33 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)
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)
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)
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)
But while the herd instinct of those "who want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool and the head down" (José Ortega y Gasset)—is of the animalistic order, the romantic spirit is purely human, divine.
The Menace of the Herd (1943)
Dignity is naturally an "aristocratic" virtue, best demonstrated in adverse circumstances, in bearing of suffering, in facing death, childbirth, or the guillotine. Dignity as an attitude is also something personal and not collective. Democratism never liked dignity. Nothing infuriates the howling mob more than dignity.
The Menace of the Herd (1943)
The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacrilegious offender; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forcing the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw.
The Menace of the Herd (1943)
The horizontalist is tied down and cannot rise above himself. In his antagonism toward all hierarchy he even finally opposes the idea of God as a superior to himself, as a Supreme Being, and therefore also the conceptual images of Popes, emperors, kings, and fathers.
The Menace of the Herd (1943)
The worship of size and number is an old ochlocratic as well as materialistic trend as opposed to the Christian traditional love for quality. It is "bigger and better" and not "better and bigger" which inspires our democratists with their competitive and recordistic tendencies.
The Menace of the Herd (1943)