Oskar Rönngren’s Reviews > The Crisis of the Modern World > Status Update

"As we are speaking of economic factors, we will take the opportunity
to mention a widespread illusion on this subject, namely that
of supposing that relations established in the field of commerce can
serve to draw peoples closer together and bring about an understanding
between them, whereas in reality they have exactly the
opposite effect."
-pp. 88

"If the word 'democracy' is defined as the government of the people
by themselves, it expresses an absolute impossibility...

it is contradictory to say that the same persons can be at the same time rulers and ruled, because, to use Aristotelian terminology, the same being cannot be 'in act' and 'in potency' at the same time and in the same
relationship."
-pp. 74

"The most decisive argument against democracy can be summed
up in a few words: the higher cannot proceed from the lower,
because the greater cannot proceed from the lesser; this is an absolute
mathematical certainty that nothing can gainsay.

And it should
be remarked that this same argument, applied to a different order of
things, can also be invoked against materialism;"

-pp. 73

"Modern man, instead of attempting to
raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level,
which is doubtless the reason why there are so many who imagine,
when one speaks to them of 'traditional sciences', or even of pure
metaphysics, that one is speaking only of 'profane science' and of
'philosophy'."
-pp. 66

"if an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it; if it is false, there is no credit in having invented it. A true idea cannot be 'new', for truth is not a product of the human mind; it exists independently of us, and all we have to do is to take cognizance of it; outside this knowledge there can be nothing but error"
-pp. 56-57

Moreover,because of the correspondence that exists between all the orders of reality, the truths of a lower order can be taken as symbols of those of higher orders,and can therefore serve as 'supports' by which one
may arrive at an understanding of these; and this fact makes it possible
for any science to become a sacred science,giving it a higher or
'anagogical' meaning deeper than that which it possesses in itself.

"a true understanding can come only from above and not from below; and
this should be taken in a twofold sense: the work must begin from
what is highest, that is, from principles, and descend gradually to the various orders of application, always keeping rigorously to the
hierarchical dependence that exists between them"

-pp. 30-31