Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Austrian columnist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn was an Austrian political scientist and philosopher. He opposed the French Revolution as well as communism and Nazism. Describing himself as a "conservative arch-liberal" or "extreme liberal", Kuehnelt-Leddihn often argued that majority rule in democracies is a threat to individual liberties, and declared himself a monarchist and an enemy of all forms of totalitarianism, although he also supported what he defined as "non-democratic republics," such as Switzerland and the early United States. Kuehnelt-Leddihn cited the U.S. Founding Fathers, Tocqueville, Burckhardt, and Montalembert as the primary influences for his skepticism towards democracy.

Austrian - Columnist | July 31, 1909 - May 26, 1999

Source: Wikipedia

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

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

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

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

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

"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

Top 13 Quotes & Sayings by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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