René Guénon - The Crisis of the Modern World (1942)

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Aristocracy, … taken in its etymological sense, means precisely the power of the elect. The elect, by the very definition of the word, can only be the few, and their power, or rather their authority, being due to their intellectual superiority, has nothing in common with the numerical strength on which democracy is based, a strength whose inherent tendency is to sacrifice the minority to the majority, and therefore quality to quantity and the elect to the masses.

René Guénon
The traditional sciences … constitute … a preparation for a higher knowledge and a way of approach to it, and by virtue of their hierarchical arrangement according to the levels of existence to which they refer, they form, as it were, so many rungs by which it is possible to climb to the level of pure intellectuality. It is only too clear that modern sciences cannot in any way serve either of these purposes; this is why they can be no more than profane science, whereas the traditional sciences … are effectively incorporated in sacred science.

René Guénon
There are people whose mind would recoil from actual negation, but who have no objection to complete indifference; and it is this that is the most to be feared, for, to deny something, one must think about it to some extent, however little that may be, whereas an attitude of indifference makes it possible not to think about it at all.

René Guénon
Philosophy … is interesting because it expresses, in a form as clearly defined as possible, the tendencies of this or that period, much more than it really creates them; and even if it can be said to direct them to a certain extent, it does so only secondarily and when they are already formed.

René Guénon
Is it because Westerners have come to lose their intellectuality through over-developing their capacity for action that they console themselves by inventing theories which set action above everything, and even go so far, as in the case of pragmatism, as to deny that there exists anything of value beyond action; or is the contrary true, that it is the acceptance of this point of view that has led to the intellectual atrophy we see today?

René Guénon
Matter is essentially multiplicity and division; and this, be it said in passing, is why all that proceeds from matter can beget only strife and all manner of conflicts between peoples and between individuals. The deeper one sinks into matter, the more the elements of division and opposition gain force and scope; and, on the other hand, the more one rises towards pure spirituality, the nearer one approaches to that unity which can only be fully realized by consciousness of the universal principles.

René Guénon
It is, however, only in the nineteenth century that one sees men beginning to glory in their ignorance—for to proclaim oneself an agnostic means nothing else—and claiming to forbid others any knowledge to which they themselves have no access; and this marked one stage further in the intellectual decline of the West.

René Guénon
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.

René Guénon
Have we not arrived at that terrible age, announced in the Sacred Books of India, "when the castes shall be mingled, when even the family shall no longer exist"?

René Guénon
A community conceived only as the arithmetical sum of its component individuals; a community is, in fact, no more than this once it ceases to be attached to any principle higher than the individuals.

René Guénon
There can be only one way out of the chaos, in the social domain as in all others: the restoration of intellectuality, which would result in the formation once more of an elect.

René Guénon
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.

René Guénon
It is true that the masses have always been led in one manner or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a merely passive element, a matter in the Aristotelian sense of the word. But, to lead them today, it is sufficient to dispose of purely material means, … and this shows clearly to what depths our age has sunk. At the same time the masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this is a sign from which the extent of their stupidity may be inferred.

René Guénon
If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it.

René Guénon