René Guénon: Quotes about the world

René Guénon was French metaphysician. Explore interesting quotes on world.

René Guénon: 56 quotes14 likes

“The “end of a world” never is and never can be anything but the end of an illusion.”

René Guénon book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times

The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times (1945)

“It is contradictory to say that the same person can be at the same time ruler and ruled. … The great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, as they are in any case incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that “universal suffrage” was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse in it currents moving in this or that direction as desired. We cannot recall who it was that first spoke of “manufacturing opinion,” but this expression is very apt.”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 93

“The guiding function exercised by a true elect, and even the very existence of this elect—since it must exercise this function if it exists at all—is utterly incompatible with democracy. … A real elect, as we have said, can only be an intellectual one; and that is why democracy can arise only where pure intellectuality no longer exists, as is the case in the modern world.”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 98

“[T]he supremacy of the Brahmins maintains doctrinal orthodoxy; the revolt of the Kshatriyas leads to heterodoxy; but with the domination of the lower castes comes intellectual night, and this is what in our day has become of a West that threatens to spread its own darkness over the entire world.”

Source: Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929), p. 30

“There is exact correspondence between a world where everything seems to be in a state of mere “becoming,” leaving no place for the changeless and permanent, and the state of mind of men who find all reality in this same “becoming,” denying by implication true knowledge as well as the object of that knowledge, by which we mean the transcendent and universal principles.”

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 51

“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.”

Source: Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power (1929), p. 77