Ludwig Klages Quotes

A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one.

Like an all-devouring conflagration, ‘progress’ scours the Earth, and the place that has fallen to its flames, will flourish nevermore, so long as man still survives. The animal- and plant-species cannot renew themselves, man’s innate warmth of heart has gone, the inner springs that once nurtured the flourishing songs and sacred festivals are blocked, and there remains only a wretched and cold working day and the hollow show of noisy 'entertainment.’ There can be no doubt: we are living in the era of the downfall of the soul.

Many first possess wealth, and are then possessed by it.

The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the "public opinion" that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid "progress" enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc. Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.

Make no mistake: “progress” is the lust for power, and we must unmask its method as a sick, destructive joke. Utilizing such pretexts as “necessity,” or “economic development,” the final goal of “progress” is nothing less than the destruction of life. This destructive urge takes many forms: progress is devastating forests,exterminating animal species, extinguishing native cultures, masking and distorting the pristine landscape with the varnish of industrialism, and debasing the organic life that still survives.

The nasty racism that infused the progressive eugenics of Margaret Sanger and others has largely melted away. But liberal fascists are still racist in their own nice way, believing in the inherent numinousness of blacks and the permanence of white sin, and therefore the eternal justification of white guilt. While I would argue that this is bad and undesirable, I would not dream of saying that today's liberals are genocidal or vicious in their racial attitudes the way Nazis were. Still, it should be noted that on the postmodern left, they do speak in terms Nazis could understand. Indeed, notions of "white logic" and the "permanence of race" were not only understood by Nazis but in some cases pioneered by them. The historian Anne Harrington observes that the "key words of the vocabulary of postmodernism (deconstructionism, logocentrism) actually had their origins in antiscience tracts written by Nazi and protofascist writers like Ernst Krieck and Ludwig Klages. The first appearance of the word Dekonstrucktion was in a Nazi psychiatry journal edited by Hermann Goring's cousin. Many on the left talk of destroying "whiteness" in a way that is more than superficially reminiscent of the National Socialist effort to "de-Judaize" German society. Indeed, it is telling that the man who oversaw the legal front of this project, Carl Schmitt, is hugely popular among leftist academics. Mainstream liberals don't necessarily agree with these intellectuals, but they do accord them a reverence and respect that often amount to a tacit endorsement.

We've not the slightest yearning for the social world: the storms and omens of the Cosmos will suffice.

Der Kosmos lebt, und alles Leben ist polarisiert nach Seele (Psyche) und Leib (Soma). Wo immer lebendiger Leib, da ist auch Seele; wo immer Seele, da ist auch lebendiger Leib. Die Seele ist der Sinn des Leibes, das Bild des Leibes die Erscheinung der Seele. Was immer erscheint, das hat einen Sinn; und jeder Sinn offenbart sich, indem er erscheint.

Make no mistake: “progress” is the lust for power and nothing besides, and we must unmask its method as a sick, destructive joke. Utilizing such pretexts as “necessity,” “economic development,” and “culture,” the final goal of “progress” is nothing less than the destruction of life. This destructive urge takes many forms: progress is devastating forests,exterminating animal species, extinguishing native cultures, masking and distorting the pristine landscape with the varnish of ndustrialism, and debasing the organic life that still survives.