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Quotes from Alain de Benoist

One who criticises capitalism while approving of immigration, of which the working class is its first victim, would do better to remain silent. One who criticises immigration while remaining silent regarding capitalism should do the same.
~ Alain de Benoist
The promotion of 'average' individual causes a general levelling down.
~ Alain de Benoist
In the Bible, man is only free to submit or be damned. His one freedom is the renunciation of that freedom. He finds his "salvation" by freely accepting his subjugation. The Christian ideal, says Saint Paul, is to be freely "subservient to God" (Romans 6:22).
~ Alain de Benoist
Modernity proclaims rights without in any way providing the means to exercise them.
~ Alain de Benoist
Paganism therefore implies the rejection of this discontinuity, this rupture, this fundamental tear, which is the "dualistic fiction," which, as Nietzsche wrote in The Antichrist, "degenerated God into the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes!
~ Alain de Benoist
The martyr is the exact opposite of the pagan hero personified in the Greek and Germanic heroes … For the pagan hero, a man's worth lay in his prowess in attaining and holding onto power, and he gladly died on the battlefield in the moment of victory.
~ Alain de Benoist
Yahweh would have preferred that man had not emerged from "nature." This is the meaning of the story told in the first chapters of Genesis.
~ Alain de Benoist
In fact Yahweh is none other than the God who says "enough." The Law he issues is meant as limitation. The Covenant he concludes symbolically seals this castration.
~ Alain de Benoist
A collection of errors does not make a truth: quality cannot stem from quantity – a value is not a weight. The reasons of the majority cannot be taken as good reasons .
~ Alain de Benoist
Nor is there any valid reason to reject the idea of God or the notion of the sacred just because of the sickly expression Christianity has given to them, any more than it is necessary to break with aristocratic principles on the pretext that they have been caricatured by the bourgeoisie.
~ Alain de Benoist
If all men are brothers outside of any specifically human paradigm then no one can truly be a brother. The institution of a symbolically universal "paternity" annihilates the very possibility of true fraternity, in such a way that it proclaims itself in the absolute by the very thing that destroys it.
~ Alain de Benoist
One can have a society without God," writes Régis Debray, "but there cannot be a society without religion." He adds, "Those nations on the way to disbelief are on the path to abdication." One can also cite Georges Bataille, according to whom, "religion, whose essence is the search for lost intimacy, boils down to a clearly conscious effort to become entirely self-conscious.
~ Alain de Benoist
Yahweh accepts that man has a history, but he strives to neutralize it by giving it a purpose, which is precisely the return to the pre-historical state of paradisiacal "innocence." (Yahweh only accepts history in order to assign it an end.)
~ Alain de Benoist
As man has managed to turn himself into a player of the world, the sole thing that can now prevent him from using all his possibilities of playing, is to make him believe that he did not invent the rules of the game.
~ Alain de Benoist
In fact, it is not a question of going back to the past, but of connecting with it-and also, by that very fact, in a spherical conception of history, to connect to the eternal and cause it to surge back, to have consonance in life, and to disentangle itself from the tyranny of the logos, the terrible tyranny of the Law, so as to reestablish the school of the mythos and life.
~ Alain de Benoist
Universalism is a corruption of objectivity. Whereas objectivity is achieved from particular things, universalism claims to define particularity from an abstract notion posed arbitrarily.
~ Alain de Benoist
The opposite concept of the Latin religio should be sought in the Latin verb negligere. To be religious is synonymous with responsibility, not neglect. To be responsible is to be free—to possess the concrete means of exercising free action. At the same time, to be free is also to be connected to others by a common spirituality.
~ Alain de Benoist
The world only hides on thing, says Clément Rosset, and that is that it has nothing to hide. It is sufficient onto itself for its own unveiling. Meaning only appears as the result of the representations and interpretations man may give to it.
~ Alain de Benoist
Faith and science thus find themselves reconciled, not in the way of the scholastic, who claims to prove the reality of his dogmatic propositions by means of universal reason, but by the assertion of the overall oneness of the real that has no double or reflection.
~ Alain de Benoist
Nadamos en pleno utilitarismo teleológico: hay verdades que son indeseables porque no son rentables, y hay mentiras que son necesarias.
~ Alain de Benoist
Contrary to what is all too often claimed, voters do not wish the men they have elected to be in their image. Voters love greatness and are capable of recognizing it. They love courage, even when they personally lack it.
~ Alain de Benoist
El pasado ha de pasar, no para caer en el olvido, sino para hallar su lugar en el único contexto que le conviene: la historia. Sólo un pasado historizado puede, en efecto, informar válidamente al presente, mientras que un pasado mantenido permanentemente actual no puede sino ser fuente de polémicas partidarias y de ambigüedades.
~ Alain de Benoist
Afirmar que um sistema político pode suscitar entusiasmo apresentando-se abertamente como portador de uma "doutrina de ódio" implica olhar os partidários como loucos, doentes criminosos ou perversos. Será necessário, então, explicar como é que um povo inteiro ficou louco. Se o é por natureza, que ideia fazemos da natureza humana? Se o é por acidente, como é que nisso se tornou - ou cessou de o ser?
~ Alain de Benoist
When one speaks of a 'human right', does one mean that this right possesses an intrinsic value, an absolute value or an instrumental value? That it is of such importance that its realisation should take precedence over all other considerations, or that it just counts among the things that are indispensable? That it gives a power or a privilege? That it permits an immunity or that it confers an immunity?
~ Alain de Benoist