Philosophers From Columbia

"Adaptation to to the modern world requires sclerosis of sensibility and degradation of character."

"Nowadays public opinion is not the sum of private opinions. On the contrary, private opinions are an echo of public opinion."

"Excess of politeness paralyzes; the lack of it brutalizes."

"To be unaware of the putrefaction of the modern world is a symptom of contagion by it."

"Intellectual vulgarity attracts voters like flies."

"No public cause deserves the unlimited allegiance of an intelligent man."

"History is a series of nights and days. Short days and protracted nights."

"There is an illiteracy of the soul that no diploma cures."

"God prefers an uncircumcised heart to a castrated mind."

"The genuine reader is the one who reads for pleasure the books that others only study."

"The function of revolutions is to destroy the illusions that created them."

"Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies."

""Taste is relative" is the excuse adopted by those eras that have bad taste."

"The modernist object does not possess inner life; only internal conflicts."

"Whoever says that he "belongs to his time" is only saying that he agrees with the largest number of fools at that moment."

"The criterion of "progress" between two cultures or two eras consists of a greater capacity to kill."

"The word "modern" no longer has an automatic prestige except among fools."

"Individualism is the cradle of vulgarity."

"The modernist thirst for originality makes the mediocre artist believe that the secret of originality consists simply in being different."

"In general, "historical necessity" turns out to be merely a name for human stupidity."

"Clarity of text is the sole incontrovertible sign of the maturity of an idea."

"If philosophy does not resolve any scientific problem, science, in its turn, does not resolve any philosophical problem."

"To tolerate does not mean to forget that what we tolerate does not deserve anything more."

"The difference between "organic" and "mechanical" in social matters is a moral one: the "organic" is the result of innumerable humble acts; the "mechanical" is the result of one decisive act of arrogance."

"The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own."

"La técnica no cumple los viejos sueños del hombre, sino los remeda con sorna. (p. 12)"

"Envejecer es catástrofe del cuerpo que nuestra cobardía convierte en catástrofe del alma. (p. 21)"

"En lugar de humanizar la técnica el moderno prefiere tecnificar al hombre. (p. 123)"

"La técnica ofrecería menos peligros si su manipuleo no le fuese tan fácil al imbécil y tan rentable al caco. (p. 179)"

"El moderno llama “cambio” caminar más rápidamente por el mismo camino en la misma dirección. El mundo, en los últimos trescientos años, no ha cambiado sino en ese sentido. La simple propuesta de un verdadero cambio escandaliza y aterra al moderno. (p. 227)"