"Optimism is never faith in progress, but hope for a miracle."

Nicolás Gómez Dávila Philosophy See all quotes by Nicolás Gómez Dávila →

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More by Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“An individual declares himself a member of some group or other with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.”

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

“The enemies of myth are not the friends of reality but of triviality.”

“Genuine allegiance to an idea surpasses every psychological or social motivation.”

“To be intelligent without ideas is the privilege of the artist.”

“The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, ou…"

— Susan Sontag

Literature1933–2004

#hope

"In any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those — dead sure, as our phrase i…"

— Albert Jay Nock

Literature1870–1945

#knowledge

"Christian hope asks us to regard every stage in the growth of a person and every phase in the development of the Church as merely provisional. It has to be transcended. We are still on our way to the …"

— Kurien Kunnumpuram

Religion1931–2018

#hope