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Aristocracy', […] taken in its etymological sense, means precisely the power of the elite. The elite can by definition only be the few, and their power, or rather their authority, deriving as it does from their intellectual superiority, has nothing in common with the numerical strength on which democracy is based, a strength whose inherent tendency is to sacrifice the minority to the majority, and therefore quality to quantity, and the elite to the masses.

— René Guénon The Crisis of the Modern World (1927)

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More quotes by René Guénon

A philosopher's renown is increased more by inventing a new error than by repeating a truth that has already been expressed by others.

The Crisis of the Modern World (1927)

If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it.

The Crisis of the Modern World (1927)

Dante's corpus as a whole is in certain respects like a testament to the closing medieval age; it shows what the Western world would have been had it not broken from its tradition.

Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929)

It is worth noting that Protestantism suppresses the clergy, and though it claims to uphold the authority of the Bible, it in fact ruins it by 'free inquiry'.

Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929)

The true function of the priesthood, then, is above all one of knowledge and teaching, and this is why, as we said above, its proper attribute is wisdom.

Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: René Guénon (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.