Curtis Yarvin

“[T]he undemocratic, tyrannous societies are not those which failed to take the democratic arsenic, but those which took it and found it fatal.”

“[A] free, prosperous democratic society is like a person who's so strong and healthy he can take a dose of arsenic every day—or at least, every four years—and still survive, sort of. The free, prosperous democratic society might be remarkably unfree and unprosperous compared to an undemocratic society that never took the arsenic, but so few of the latter survived the last two centuries that we have no basis for comparison.”

“The permanent contest for political power that democracy creates is an extreme case of limited war, in which no weapons at all are allowed, and battle is resolved by counting heads.”

“[P]ublic opinion in a democracy is a sort of funhouse mirror that reflects—albeit inaccurately, imperfectly, and often quite reluctantly—the views of the governing elite. To be fair, it also has a certain filtering effect which discourages some of the nuttiest intellectual fads, if only because they can be positively incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't been to Harvard.”

“Democracy means that popular opinion controls the state; intellectuals guide popular opinion; ergo, intellectuals guide the state.”

“A political formula is a belief that makes the ruled accept their rulers. Since the former tend to outnumber the latter, a political formula is, if not absolutely essential, an excellent way to cut down on your security costs.”

“Unless you are one hundred and seven years old and a veteran of the Austrian Landwehr, you probably associate democracy with peace, freedom, progress, and prosperity. Since I associate democracy with war, tyranny, destruction and poverty, we certainly have something to talk about.”

“[T]he tradition to which most sophisticated Westerners of 2007 conform is best seen as a sect of Christianity.”

“[T]he university, which was established as a refuge whose purpose was to pursue truth without regard for the opinions of the world, has become a power center whose purpose is to impose its own opinions on the world.”

“[M]ost of the advances in Western scientific history, contrary to popular belief, occurred when scientists were not servants of the state.”

“The charge that universities are directly responsible for almost all the violence in the world today […] strikes me as essentially accurate.”

“[I]f there is any constant in history, it is that philosophers are very bad at predicting the future. Even when the policies they propose are followed, the results tend to be quite different from predictions.”

“Everyone who spins a myth claims to be debunking one.”

“I'm quite happy to be an anti-intellectual, actually. It is the modern equivalent of anticlericalism, and it is long overdue. One can oppose specific institutions without opposing thought in general. In fact, sometimes it is even necessary.”

“The entire intellectual system of the West was corrupted by its twentieth-century connection to government. Public opinion reflects press opinion, press opinion reflects academic politics, and academic politics are driven by power struggles in which the attraction of the state is clear.The victory of Keynesian over Misesian economics, for example, is a classic case of this. Theories of economics which led to jobs advising the state were adaptive. Theories which didn't weren't.”

“The Western world certainly has all the physical and human tools it needs to restore civilization in the Third World and resume the work of Lord Cromer. But it lacks the legal and political tools, and until it has those it shouldn't even try. As in Vietnam, it ends up just handing victories to its adversaries, who use the result as simply one more piece of evidence that demonstrates their invincibility.”

“Iraq simply cannot be governed by a military effort, no matter how technically advanced, well-trained, and well-funded, that thinks of itself as a combination of a SWAT team and the Salvation Army.”

“It is physically impossible to win a war by arresting an invading army and trying each of its soldiers.”

“[P]lenty of perfectly stable and peaceful societies […] have been governed by a ruling caste which was culturally distinct from the body of the population.”

“Someday Westerners will learn that what matters about a government is what it does, and what doesn't matter is the race, creed, color, sexual preference, or country of origin of its employees. Unfortunately, I suspect we may have to learn it the hard way.”