Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Quotes

• 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

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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• 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

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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• "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, Food, Jail

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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• 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

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• 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

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1943). “The Menace of the Herd: Or Procrustes at Large”, p.49, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Freedom, Government, Democracy

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• As humanism begins to dominate the state, the consequence is complete hostile annexation of the church or persecution by separation. Religion is then removed from the marketplace and the school, later from other domains of public life. The state will not toerlate any gods besides itself.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Christian, Religious, School

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• 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

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• Even 51 per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian and dictatorial règime, 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

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1952). “Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Times”, p.88, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• 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

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• 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 “distraction.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  Reflection, Men, Meditation

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• [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

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• 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

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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