Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Even 51 per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian and dictatorial rÃ¨gime, suppress minorities, and still remain democratic; there is, as we have said, little doubt that the American Congress and the French Chambre have a power over their respective nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III were they alive today.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Envy #Doubt #Live For Today
For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#War #Average #World
[T]he democratic principle of "one man, one vote," viewed against a background of voting masses numbering several millions, only serves to demonstrate the pitiful helplessness of the inarticulate individual, who functions at the polls as the smallest indivisible arithmetical (and not always algebraic) unit. He acts in total anonymity, secrecy and legal irresponsibility.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Men #Voting #Principles
Sometime in the coming century, people will rack their brains pondering how nations with tremendous scientific and intellectual achievements could have given uninstructed and untrained men and women the right to vote equally uninstructed and untrained people into responsible positions.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Men #People #Intellectual
People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#People #Evil #Giving
Only a person with convictions has a genuine possibility to be tolerant. He who accepts no absolute values but clings to polite doubt cannot be tolerant but merely indifferent. He is morally defenseless in the face of evil.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Evil #Doubt #Faces
Modern man is a hard driven nomad without any stability, not (as the Bible has it) a wanderer or a pilgrim, but a refugee-an escapist. Instead of meditation and reflection there is only speed, fear and â€œdistraction.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Reflection #Men #Meditation
It is the low drive for sameness and the hatred of otherness that characterizes all forms of leftism, which inevitably are totalitarian...
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Hatred #Form #Lows
Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Religious #Rights #Self
Democratism and its allied herd movements, while remaining loyal to the principle of equality and identity, will never hesitate to sacrifice liberty.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Sacrifice #Liberty #Identity
"Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is 'prisoners'"
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Spiritual #Answers #Care
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
-- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

#Freedom #Minorities #Fifty

You may also like:

Albert J. Nock
Author
Barry Goldwater
Former United States Senator
Christopher Dawson
Historian
Edmund Burke
Statesman
George Santayana
Philosopher
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Economist
Irving Babbitt
John Lukacs
Historian
Joseph de Maistre
Philosopher
Juan Donoso Cortes
Author
M. Stanton Evans
Journalist
Mark Steyn
Writer
Matt Labash
Journalist
Murray Rothbard
Economist
Nicolas Gomez Davila
Writer
Roger Scruton
Philosopher
Russell Kirk
Historian
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Author
Amir Taheri
Author
Jed Babbin
Author