The Hour of Decision Quotes

“Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision

“Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision

“Such is the trend of Nihilism. It occurs to no one to educate the masses to the level of true culture - that would be too much trouble, and possibly certain postulates for it are absent. On the contrary, the structure of society is to be levelled down to the standard of the populace. General equality is to reign, everything is to be equally vulgar. The same way of getting money and the same pleasures to spend it on: panem et circenses - no more is wanted, no more would be understood. Superiority, manners, taste, and every description of inward rank are crimes. Ethical, religious, national ideas, marriage for the sake of children, the family, State authority: all these are old-fashioned and reactionary.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“[A]n der Wirklichkeit der Geschichte, scheitert jede Ideologie.”
― Oswald Spengler, Jahre der Entscheidung 1: Deutschland und die Weltgeschichtliche Entwicklung

“Rationalism is at bottom nothing but criticism, and the critic is the reverse of a creator: he dissects and he reassembles; conception and birth are alien to him. Accordingly his work is artificial and lifeless, and when brought into contact with real life, it kills. All these systems and organizations are paper productions; they are methodical and absurd and live only on the paper they are written on. The process began at the time of Rousseau and Kant with philosophical ideologies that lost themselves in generalities; passed in the nineteenth century to scientific constructions with scientific, physical, Darwinian methods - sociology, economics, materialistic history-writing - and lost itself in the twentieth in the literary output of problem novels and party programs.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Capitalism” and “Socialism” are both of an age, intimately related, produced by the same outlook and burdened with the same tendencies. Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“We are still in the Age of Rationalism, which began in the eighteenth century and is now rapidly nearing its close. We are all its creatures whether we know and wish it or not. The word is familiar enough, but who knows how much it implies? It is the arrogance of the urban intellect, which, detached from its roots and no longer guided by strong instinct, looks down with contempt on the full-blooded thinking of the past and the wisdom of ancient peasant stock. It is the period in which everyone can read and write and therefore must have his say and always "knows better." This type of mind is obsessed by concepts - the new gods of the Age - and it exercises its wits on the world as it sees it. "It is no good," it says; "we could make it better; here goes, let us set up a program for a better world!" Nothing could be easier for persons of intelligence, and no doubt seems to be felt that this world will then materialize of itself. It is given a label, "Human Progress," and now that it has a name, it is. Those who doubt it are narrow reactionaries, heretics, and, what is worse, persons devoid of democratic virtue: away with them! In this wise the fear of reality was overcome by intellectual arrogance, the darkness that comes from ignorance of all things of life, spiritual poverty, lack of reverence, and, finally, world-alien stupidity - for there is nothing stupider than the rootless urban intelligence.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another, or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We sing in the woods at night because we are afraid.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Added to all this is the universal dread of reality. We "pale-faces" have it, all of
us, although we are seldom, and most of us never, conscious of it. It is the
spiritual weakness of the "Late" man of the higher civilizations, who lives in his
cities cut off from the peasant and the soil and thereby from the natural
experiencing of destiny, time, and death. He has become too wide awake, too
accustomed to ponder perpetually over yesterday and tomorrow, and cannot bear
that which he sees and is forced to see: the relentless course of things, senseless
chance, and real history striding pitilessly through the centuries into which the
individual with his tiny scrap of private life is irrevocably born at the appointed
place. That is what he longs to forget, refute, or contest. He takes flight from
history into solitude, into imaginary far-away systems, into some faith or another,
or into suicide. Like a grotesque ostrich he buries his head in hopes, ideals, and
cowardly optimism: it is so, but it ought not to be, therefore it is otherwise. We
sing in the woods at night because we are afraid.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Dynastic sovereignty has been replaced by election that each time brings new hordes of the unfit into state affairs.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution

“Der Farbige durchschaut den Weißen, wenn er von "Menschheit" und ewigem Frieden redet. Er wittert die Unfähigkeit und den fehlenden Willen, sich zu verteidigen.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision: Germany and World-Historical Evolution