Revolt Against The Modern World

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” ~Cicero

"The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief." ~Aristotle

The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief. ~Aristotle

"Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within himself or around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. And having no respect, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself." ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes." ~Peter Kreeft

"Men are tired to disgust of money economy. They hope for salvation from somewhere or other, for some real thing of honor and chivalry, of inward nobility, of unselfishness and duty. ~Oswald Spengler

“Anyone wishing to conquer a people could do it by using this system: breaking its ties with heaven and land, introducing fratricidal quarrels and fights, promoting immorality and licentiousness, by material ruin, physical poisoning, drunkenness. All these destroy a nation more than being blasted by thousands of cannon or bombed by thousands of airplanes.” ~Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

"Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. / Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. / Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. / Attractive because it promises true good.” ~Blaise Pascal, The Pensées

"We are witnessing, not the natural end of a great human civilization, but the birth of a inhuman civilization that could never have come into being without a vast, an immense, a universal sterilisation of life's highest values." ~George Bernanos

"Moderns seek change; tradition sought permanence." “Traditions are answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.” ~Sir Roger Scruton

“Men are often called intelligent wrongly. Intelligent men are not those who are erudite in the sayings and books of the wise men of old, but those who have an intelligent soul and can discriminate between good and evil. They avoid what is sinful and harms the soul; and with deep gratitude to God they resolutely adhere by dint of practice to what is good and benefits the soul. These men alone should truly be called intelligent.” +Saint Anthony The Great

“With no significant political forces opposing the conversion of our world into a universal marketplace, the conflict of our time is the struggle to retain one’s humanity in an increasingly artificial world. That is the only battle that retains any genuine significance from a traditional perspective.” ~Julius Evola

"We find ourselves in a world of ruins—we should not forget this. And just how much may still be saved depends only on the existence or lack of men who are still capable of standing among these ruins, not in order to dictate any formulas, but to serve as examplars; not by pandering to demagogy and the materialism of the masses, but in such a way as to reawaken different forms of sensibility and interest.” ~Julius Evola

"As a soldier of Christ, your virtues may be objects of hatred for the wicked, but they will never lack the approbation of the good and wise, which is the greatest and only desirable honour." ~Pope Leo XIII

"It's not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into a hero." ~Thomas Carlyle

"The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men…In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique." ~G.K. Chesterton

"The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always been objected to being governed at all." “I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate...We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them." - Police officer "When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be the rich." ~G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

"Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created." ~Roger Scruton

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career." ~C.S. Lewis

"The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty by a wall of erudition." "Beauty has been stolen from the people and sold back to them under the concept of luxury." ~Sir Roger Scruton