Ernst Junger Quotes
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There are wolves hiding in the gray flock; characters who still know what freedom is. This is a ruler's worst nightmare.
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Belief in these solitary men springs from a longing for a fraternity without name, for a deeper spiritual relationship than is possible between human beings.
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I consider it poor historical form to make fun of ancestral mistakes without respecting the eros that was linked to them. We are no less in bondage to the Zeitgeist; folly is handed down, we merely don a new cap.
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Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered.
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Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!
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When two individuals love each other, they become free from the Leviathan, they create space it cannot control. Eros shall always triumph, as the true message of the gods, over all titanic creations.
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“General" stands here for the individual who goes into action, whether freely or forcedly. Since anarchy offers him an especially favorable charge, this type is permanent today. Thus, "general" has a universal rather than a special meaning. It can be replaced ad libitum. It refers not to a profession but to a condition. The latter may also crop up in a coolie, in which case it is particularly effective.
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The goal of life is to gain an idea of what life is. In the absolute sense, of course, that changes nothing, according to the priests - but it helps our journey.
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The hardiest sons of the war, the men who lead the storm-troop, and manipulate the tank, the aeroplane, and the submarine, are preeminent in technical accomplishment; and it is these picked examples of dare-devil courage that represent the modern state i battle. These men of first-rate qualities with real blood in their veins, courageous, intelligent, accustomed to serve the machine, and yet its superior at the same time, are the men, too, who show up best in the trench and among the shell-holes.
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Today words like 'persevere' and 'hero’s death' had been so ceaselessly bandied about that they had long since acquired an ironic sound—at least wherever there was actual fighting. . . . Once, before an attack, Sturm had heard an old sergeant say the following: 'Kids, we’re going over there now to gobble up the Englishmen’s rations.' It was the best battle address that he had ever heard. That was surely something good in the war—that it destroyed glorious-sounding phrases. Concepts that hung fleshless in the void were overcome by laughter.
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We do not escape our boundaries or our innermost being. We do not change. It is true we may be transformed, but we always walk within our boundaries, within the marked-off circle.
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History is the footsteps of free men towards destiny.