QUOTES by Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano

Corruption, Spain, and the twenty-first century

From: Society in Crisis. Reflections for the Twenty-first Century (1995)

"Whatever one's enemies do is sometimes said to be corrupt – not acts in themselves. Unless everyone is held to the same standards, the word corruption will be nothing but a weapon used to take or hold power, a means for partisan action. Spain will achieve a dignified presence in the twenty-first century only if it can do away with corruption, otherwise it will take the path of national disintegration."

"Overstating others' faults is cynical; no-one has perfect vision, everyone has flaws of some sort, but not everyone can be said to be blind."

Crisis and future

From: Inflammatory Irreflections (2001)

"A crisis in a company causes it to improve or shut down; running away from them, sweeping them under the carpet, or lying about them instead of facing them is dangerous."

"By primordial crisis I mean … one of transcendental importance that affects a substantial portion or even all of mankind, increasingly subsumed in globalization driven by the West."

"In the long run I regard a 'crisis' affecting the current balance of forces of mankind, in whole or in part, as inevitable, perhaps as an outgrowth of economic development itself, the only objective deemed worthy of men in our time."

"Our economy is ready for an ever increasing standard of living, of economic income, but it is not ready for a sudden halt in that trend, not to mention a reverse."

"People who invested in railroads in the nineteenth century saw the value of their shares and securities plummet … Similarly, the value of highway construction has been artificially inflated, like the Internet industry now."

"The effects of the 'new economy' will be like earlier ones … mankind will lose its current stability and there will be sociological changes of great significance. This is what I fear, and by primordial crisis, 'the mother of all crises', I mean one that will affect socio-political structures worldwide and will have a drastic effect on all of us. This must sound deflating in the comfortable and hedonistic lifestyle we all think of as our entitlement, where we are exposed to little risk and are able to avoid discomfort while averting the responsibility that comes with free will. Too bad."

"A primordial crisis may bring about a new type of society, one I cannot foresee, in ways I cannot predict, and will lead to changes in the strategies of power, in the rules of the game and in principles, and I also think a return to God, to whom men turn when they feel overwhelmed by circumstance."

"There will be unforeseeable social repercussions when economic instability makes it necessary, one way or another, to reduce the average incomes of the citizens of the Western countries by half or even much more, a catastrophe to those used to being at the top."

"The Roman Empire … fell apart in a little over three hundred years. Today, admittedly with differences … we are living in a Pax Americana whose collapse is unthinkable, but by the same token changes now take place over very short time spans, decades, as opposed to centuries two thousand years ago."

"… the primordial crisis I am talking about will be the result of … mankind's own acts; I regard it as inevitable, though not for a hundred or two hundred years. There is no question in my mind that it will shake our Western civilization, I am not sure how, but radically. Cyclical crises are not to be confused with a crisis of transcendental dimensions for the ambitions and selfishness of human culture today."