Georges Bernanos Quotes

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

I prefer to work for my country in a free and independent way. I was born free, and I want to die free. I am always suspicious of ideology. Instead, I respect men with ideas.

A liberal education is at the heart of a civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.

Collectivism can be imposed only upon slaves—and then collectivism becomes the negation of humanity.

As to what we call the masses and the common men—there are no common men. All men are at last of a size.

Society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal impulses and preferences.

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius

You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.

There's no such thing as society.

Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a State computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

How could I be anything but a dissenter? Who wants the opinion of a group?

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man.

There is no such thing as society.

To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.

Humanity to me is not a mob. A mob is a degeneration of humanity. A mob is humanity going the wrong way.

Civilization, or "the system" or "society" or whatever you want to call it, is best served not by mules but by free men.

The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."

We have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.

'He who seeks may easily get lost himself. It is a crime to go apart and be alone.' Thus speaks the herd.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people's ideas and thoughts and words, because I'm very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

The individual man tries to escape the race. And as soon as he ceases to represent the race, he represents man.