From Petre Țuțea’s sayings

It is said that intellect is given to man to know the truth. In my view, intellect is not given to man to know the truth, but to receive it.

We have had the revelation that apart from God there is no truth.

More truths, I say, reported to God, are equal to no truth. And if truth is one, transcendent in essence, it has its seat neither in science, nor in philosophy, nor in art. If a philosopher, a scientist, or an artist is religious, he is no different from a filthy old woman on her knees praying to the Mother of God.

Now, in my old age, I can say that without God and without immortality there is no truth.

A filthy old woman on her knees, standing before an icon of the Mother of God in a church, facing an atheist Nobel Prize winner—the old woman is human, and the Nobel Prize winner is a ferret. And being an atheist, he dies like a ferret.

When I speak to an atheist, it is like speaking to a door. There is no connection between believer and non-believer. One is dead, soul-dead, and the other is alive. Between the living and the dead, there is no connection. The Christian believer is alive.

Atheists and materialists claim we differ from animals because we have no tails.

Atheists are born, but they are born in vain.

I do not hate the bourgeoisie. I have decided that a man who wishes to be rich is not a sinner. An old priest once said: There is a saying that money is the devil’s eye. I do not see it as the devil’s eye; I see it as a double-edged scale. If you have it, no matter how much, and you ascend the ladder benevolently, it is no longer the devil’s eye. But if you descend, you descend with it into hell—through vices, greed, and all imperfections associated with pride and lust for power.

I cannot avoid the inconveniences of old age, and I cannot be angry with God for keeping me nearly ninety. But old men have a very wise privilege: they have the right to impudence—unlimited impudence. When I reflect on the sufferings of old age, I realize that the greatest genius in blind nature is the genius of death. That we die, often in time, is a sign of God’s love for us.

I am Judeocentric in the culture of Europe because, without the Bible, Shakespeare becomes a tragic joke. Without the Bible, Europeans—even Nobel Prize winners—would sleep in their cribs. Greek science and philosophy are useful, but they do not save. The first truly saving and consoling book on the continent—the sovereign book—is the Bible.

There is a book by an American scholar who tries to justify the Bible scientifically. This is nonsense. The Bible needs science like I need security.

Luther, heretic and Zevzec as he was, said two extraordinary things: that autonomous creation is a mistake, and that there is no truth apart from the Bible. It took me a lifetime to learn this. He was not that old when he said it—he was an Augustinian monk. It took me a lifetime to realize there is no truth outside the Bible.

Shakespeare, apart from the Bible—I prove this at the Sorbonne—is a writer from Găești.

There is no stairway to heaven apart from church services. The temple is a holy place so that even its surroundings become holy.

Do you know where to find the definition of man? I ask you: in the temple, in the church. There, you are compared to God because you are His image and likeness. If the Church were to disappear from history, history would have no man. Man would also disappear.

In the Church, you discover that you exist.

How empty space would be if it were not dotted with churches!

Apart from books, only beasts and saints live: the former because they have no reason, the latter because they have too much reason to need auxiliary means of consciousness.

Plato has a demiurge who is not a creator, only a craftsman of genius, because matter is superior to him. The first real idea of creation was introduced into history by Christians.

In creation, only God creates; man imitates. When I read the word creation—literary, musical, philosophical—I laugh. Man does nothing but reflect, in letters, music, or philosophy, spots of transcendence.

How can the creature be a creator? Come, father, let me show you the heirloom I made for you when I was not alive… Now, how can the creature be a creator?

Man is an animal who prays to something. He seeks an ideal model, and sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he does not. Those who have discovered the ideal pattern and its sequence of phenomena are Christians. Christianity cannot be reduced to any philosophical system, monistic, dualistic, or pluralistic. Bergson says of Christianity that we breathe it. It has the materiality of air. We are Christians without wanting to be. And if we are atheists, we are still Christians: we breathe Christianity as we breathe air.

Christianity is not an ideology, because then it would resemble Marxism. Religion expresses a lived mystery, while ideology is constructed.

To be a Christian is to bring the absolute into everyday life. Only saints are absolute Christians. Otherwise, Christianity, meant to be real, is inapplicable because it is absolute.

Sovereign over nature, subject to divinity, immortal and free by the transcendence of his condition—that is the Christian man.

Nothing can replace Christianity, not even all of pre-Christian culture. I believe the height of Europe is not Athens, but the Middle Ages, when God went from house to house. I define the splendour of historical epochs by the religious genius of the age, not by political achievements.

Jesus Christ is eternity punctuating history.

Unless you know what is revealed by divine grace or inspired, you know nothing. For example, the story of Newton’s apple falling. I do not know where I read this stupidity: “He fell into deep meditation, which led him to the law of universal gravitation.” I say: if Newton had thought until the Last Judgment, he would never have discovered anything! He was wiser. When asked how he discovered gravity, he said: I was inspired. Is it written on the apple or somewhere in nature: “the law of gravity”? The phenomena of the inner and outer world are silent. The autonomous, proud man thinks he explores them through hypotheses and discovers what he wants. He searches, but I say he searches, he does not find. Or, if he finds, he must be like Newton—he is inspired.

More virtuous than Aristotle, Bergson says that democracy is the only system compatible with freedom and human dignity, but it has an incurable flaw: it has no criteria for choosing values. Democracy is then a social system in which everyone does what they wish, and quantity replaces quality—the triumph of quantity over quality. Bergson was accused of being a fascist in Stalin’s little philosophical dictionary.

Without thinking in the style of Social Darwinism, I cannot remain indifferent to democracy’s inability to ensure the natural selection of values. Democrats think arithmetically about society: they count heads, and where there is a majority, power goes. Suffrage of the herd! That is my view of democracy.

I believe that man is made by God, and I believe God did not place a devil in him. I cannot say that God has made a devil in man. If man is God’s creature, the devil enters by default, not by His will.

A philosopher who struggles to find arguments for God’s existence—or to refute arguments for His nonexistence—is a gateway to atheism. The God of Moses is non-attributive. When Moses asks God: “What shall I tell those below about you?” God answers: “I am what I am.”

Before God, genius is the first cousin of the idiot.

Good and evil are concepts of God’s education of man.

Who does not love women? First, for their charm, and second, because they make men.

I am trying an experiment: to rid myself of philosophy, the lice of metaphysics. Cioran got rid of it long ago, although he still philosophizes. A friend says: you rid yourself, but you still use its tools. Yes, but if I board a train, it does not mean my God is the railway.

In the Middle Ages, Scythian philosophers formulated the theory of double truth: secundum fidem—truth according to faith, and secundum rationem—truth according to reason. This allowed them a free hand in philosophy, to wander until the devil takes them… One can wander in philosophy until one goes mad. What have philosophers achieved through their autonomy? Nothing! They have no truth.

The pious baboons go to the Absolute and pray; philosophers babble syllogisms.

Freemasonry seeks power under democratic slogans. They are not religious; they have only one religion: their own doctrine. They destroy their enemies socially. They are supranational, and therefore unnatural. All who aspire to the unity of humanity nullify competition between peoples; they nullify the very principle of modern civilization, born of struggle.

Genius is relief, novelty, invention, epochal creation, and style. It is not necessarily wise, but super-intelligent. Genius is original insofar as originality is possible. My maxim: God is the creator, man the imitator. By imitating the divine, the genius draws closer to heaven; but I am not as close as the saint.

There are no geniuses before God; He works with men, not geniuses.

God created the world and man, and crowned His creation with man. He gave man knowledge: the primordial origin of the ability to name things—a logical act; the mystical origin of logical thought.

The appearance of a great thinker is to the brain like a bath to a man who has toiled, sweated, and washed. Thinking is a “washing” of the brain. Sometimes I think thinking is not of the brain, which is merely a seat… Why is thinking not produced by the brain? Because not all brains produce it. If intelligence were a product of the brain, there would be no difference between Goethe and his nephew Ghita.

Once I listened to a professor at the Polytechnic and felt I was attending a bear ballet. If one sat quietly in the corner smoking, he was an engineer. The engineer is practical; the scientist is not. When Max Planck, creator of quantum physics, was told another application had been found, he said: “What is it? Look at that—I hadn’t even thought of it!”

Intelligence, no matter how great, cannot free one from prejudice. The more intelligent, the more prejudiced, because intelligence provides the tools to justify it.

When asked whether he understood thought in pure form or examples, Nae Ionescu replied: “Examples were left by God on earth so that fools could perceive ideas sensually.”

I do not understand the obsession with history. If you worship history, you worship appearance and disappearance. Is this game consoling? History has led us to the graveyard. History does not merely teach a people what to do; it renders all individual endeavors irrelevant, because one cannot work indefinitely on one’s creation. One disappears; someone else appears, transforming the world. If one cannot escape becoming, one cannot escape metaphysical sadness, the fruit of becoming. Historicizing fools console themselves with becoming. We are becoming more civilized, are we not? More civilized… I mean we die like goats, yet it is a big deal that Kant, Descartes, Newton, and other great creators of culture lived, while the religion-maker, Christ, remains central—and we do not care!

History begins with Eve and the Devil. That is the wandering of man, like damnation. At the appearance of Christ, the divinized man and the divinity of man were superimposed, and history was cancelled. Cioran: the historical is everything superhistorical. Christianity interrupted the suprahistorical, though it appeared in history.

Two disciplines obey the principle of irreversibility: thermodynamics and history.

Kant was not human. With all his stability, he could not be human. Badea Gheorghe, synchronizing with church bells, is a Nobel laureate compared to Kant.

Legionarism reflected the spirit of its age but failed because it relied on absolute nationalism—impracticable. Excess nationalism led to the Legionaries’ downfall.

With communists, if you are not with them—or no longer with them—you are a legionnaire. Why the “legionnaire syndrome” among Bolsheviks? Because legionaries were the only Romanians without the word “joke” in their dictionary.

The legionary movement was strong! It lacked lasting positive results because extremism is hard to endure. Neither Italian Fascism nor German National Socialism lasted; they were similar to the Legionary Movement. The difference: the Legion had a religious aspect. Fascism and Nazism did not. Hitler was a Germanic myth; Mussolini was an atheist. Mussolini, once, looking at his watch, said: “I give God an ultimatum: strike me down in a few minutes, if He exists.” Minutes passed. God did not exist.

Man, in his immanence, is free only in a small wooden church in Maramureș, where the Christian priest speaks of mysteries and secrets, surrounded by them like the faithful.

Man is free only in the Christian temple, in ritual, when mysteries envelop priest and congregation alike. True freedom replaces the infinity and autonomy of thought with faith in God: “Rob me, Lord, that I may be free” (Imitatio Christi).

Freedom is a rope hanging from above. You may climb to heaven, participating in your salvation, or descend into darkness. Freedom is bipolar. For Christians, freedom allows descent into evil. Criminals are the real primitives because they cannot adapt to morality and trample it with their freedom. Tyrants are absurd and shameless. Humanity is trapped in the universe, yet only man can intensify captivity to the level of imprisonment.

Man’s freedom is divine.

The Romanian language has complete virtues; it can convey all spiritual phenomena. It is difficult to master. Through it, one can become an eagle or a bell singer. Romanian has all prerequisites to be a universal language, but we lack courage; if we were conquering, it might be possible.

Lucidity is a destructive clearing of the mind. To be lucid is to stand before the cemetery, fully aware of limitations and inadequacies. Lucidity dissolves. God is to be received, not understood. Lucidity gives no access to God.

Marin Preda asked about the Macedonians. I said: “Mr. Preda, they are not Romanians—they are super-Romanians, absolute Romanians. Afflicted and displaced, they retain the instinct of a beaten animal. We have the domestic force of ducks. We are going. I have been with Macedonians in prison; you beat them, they do not complain. They have perfect masculinity.”

Human-scale knowledge can be useful, but it does not save.

A prayer in a church in Găești saves more than Plato.

The idea of absolute death is the root of modern folly.

Heidegger: to emerge from anonymity, one must live daily in the fear of absolute nothingness. Live as if dying absolutely every day.

Death drives me to be essential. The sound of earth on Nae Ionescu’s coffin made a deep impression.

Ancient dead are not beautiful; only Christian dead are. Homer: Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, killed by Achilles. Achilles weeps; then Thersites insults her corpse. Achilles kills the worker for disrespecting beauty. Christianity gave beauty to the dead.

Those who serve Chronos obsess over the graveyard.

Man follows two morals: the morality of dogmas (Christian and absolute) and the morality of rules (worldly, imperfect). Secular morality cannot separate from absolute morality; man moves asymptotically toward perfection, never attaining it.

Autonomous morality is more dangerous to religion than atheism. Secular morality is zero before the religious Absolute. It is like a train wreck—you can change it at any station. Man alone cannot create moral order. It comes from above—or not at all. Public morality requires Christian dogma. If the Church is not above the State, chaos ensues; everyone does as they please.

Moral elites surpass intellectual elites. I value judgment. Those who make syllogisms are as far from truth as turkeys tangled in bowling pins.

Napoleon is the true story of the French Revolution: a man restoring natural order, raising armies, putting hair on the alley haimanals. He explained: it was not the armies of France entering the Low Countries, but revolutionary ideas on the flag—a new philosophy of history began.

Without immortality and salvation, freedom is impossible. Man is not free without immortality and salvation. Otherwise, he is like a goat, ram, or sheep.

Only with the idea of immortality—distinct from perpetuating the species or aesthetic glory—does man surpass the animal state.

Without God, man remains a poor, rational, talking animal, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. Even a Nobel Prize winner or sweeper is still lost if God is absent.

The Italian Renaissance, centering man, is heretical from a Christian perspective. Empowering man is demonic. The true man is homo religiosus.

Man’s spiritual autonomy is illusory, constantly moving between God and the Devil. Without faith and Church, man is a rational, mortal animal. Rationality only grants a greater ability to adapt than other beasts. Claiming rationality as consolation is futile; one still appears and disappears absurdly from nature.

The scale of human values: saint, hero, genius, ordinary man—beyond which is the criminal. Saints, heroes, and geniuses exist independently of society, which must recognize them. The ordinary man’s rights are respected; no one disputes them. Mediocre men do not belong at the top; that is not in their interest. Saints sit atop the table of values—they make the absolute accessible to humans. Heroes pursue worldly achievements; their mark is temporal. Geniuses also die in history. Saints are eternal; heroes and geniuses exist in time.

Man is not the sum of billions of cells or organs. Neither the liver, kidneys, stomach, brain, nor skeletal system are independent. Man as a whole can only be understood biblically, not scientifically. Moses is more valid than the latest evolutionary novelty of science.

Mankind is easy to love; man is harder.

Personality is the individual endowed with the capacity to give of himself. The hero is a personality because he no longer belongs to himself.

I once said in a salon that Plato is the movement of the mind in eternity. When we think, we are all Platonists. To think of the universe, one must move the Bible into the frozen universe of Platonic ideas. That is meditation. Plato intuited man’s grief at being powerless in the face of the essential.

Compared to the greatness of Christ, Plato is small and humble. His archetypes are philosophical, but when interpreted through Christianity, they become ways to perceive divinity. Plato has no divinity; for him, divinity is a mere demiurge—a craftsman.

I always wanted to write a doctoral thesis on the Romanian working method, the “Aflarea în treabă.”

To the fundamental questions “why?” and “for what purpose?” the Romanian rural aporetic answers: “that’s why.”

A Frenchman once brought machines, and one malfunctioned. The Romanian said: “It works like that! We must get rid of this ‘merge și așa’ (‘it works anyway’). Not anyway, not anywhere, not at any time, not at all.”

In prison, I spent two hours proving that Romanian history, stripped of crosses on the shields of voivods, is zero. Only voivods fought to elevate standards of living. History is written with the Church.

How do Romanians participate in their salvation today? Simply: by going to church. And by using science as a toothbrush. Science says something—listen—but let us not be speechless. What a priest in Cucuieții din Deal says—consider it ritual truth.

In a courtroom with six hundred people in Aiud prison, I confessed: “Brothers, if we all die here in stripes and chains, it is not we who honor the Romanian people by dying for them—it is they who honor us by dying for us!”

Protestantism is a religion reduced to moral instruction for kindergartens.

Christian piety is so pure that Christian eroticism acquires the stamp of the Spirit—something no other Christians achieve.

I believe war is not made by man. It is made by God. Just as He gives earthquakes, He gives war.

The bravest and most brilliant soldiers belong to religious peoples. Dying under the flag, they believe they go to their ancestors. Such armies are like Wilhelm II’s, where every soldier wore a cross reading “God with us.”

The first function of true religion is consolation. Religion prevents humanity from barking like dogs. We are born, live, get sick, grow old, and die. Human destiny is not an invitation to joy. Only religion spares us the metaphysical turmoil of the graveyard. Philosophy, like Cioran’s, leads to despair in the graveyard.

Who can replace religion? None. Philosophy, speculating autonomously, produces only intellectuals. Trying to extract essences from natural sciences is parasitic. That is all. No Christian will honestly claim that religion has been replaced by philosophy or science. A Christian defines Advent by the interaction of two worlds: the imperfect reflection here, the perfect beyond. Try to say otherwise!

Religion is the unifying principle of humanity and the only salvation in which equality exists. Religion transforms mankind into a mass of cultured men.

There is no difference between a Nobel Prize winner who remains religious and an illiterate peasant.

My intellectual level, even as a scholar, does not exceed that of an obscure priest in the Bărăgan. That priest, in his ritual, speaks to the Absolute.

Science approaches the Absolute asymptotically. Art moves asymptotically toward the Absolute. Science is for profit; art is for pleasure.

Religion is the seat of truth, transcendent and unique as the principle of all things. Religion supersedes the latest theoretical speculation of science, by the absolute truth that is God. Let an atheist Nobel laureate come. What will he tell me? An old woman, falling before the icon of God, pierced by the Absolute, is human. The laureate is a ferret.

In the temptation on the Mount—retro Satan—Jesus says: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Unheard-of! Go to His kingdom by train or rocket if you can. You cannot! We swim in the universe like tadpoles; Christ’s world is transcendent, eternal, like the Mount.

Revolt is an advance on the spot. Nothing can be invented after the world’s creation unless one stands outside and creates a new world. Revolution adds nothing to Plato’s ideas.

The French Revolution was not a revolution, nor was the Russian. Only insurrectionary techniques in the struggle for power exist (Curzio Malaparte). If man is restructured, it happened once: at Christ’s appearance.

In prison, I said to the colonel—six hundred of us in a closed court: “You communists will never be revolutionaries until you imitate the most generous God in history, Christ. In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd leaves the flock for one. A single dying cell is worth more than all possible galaxies in Christ’s universe.”

The door to God is faith; the path is prayer. Prayer is man’s only manifestation of contact with God. From a Christian perspective, humility in prayer exalts, does not degrade, man.

I once said that if a priest in the Bărăgan has God with him when he prays, that priest replaces the Romanian Academy.

The saint has the cohesive power of stone.

A saint may be illiterate but is superior to a genius. Holiness connects to miracles; a saint performs miracles. A genius performs feats, not miracles. The modern world glorifies genius and progress. But mechanical and material advancement distances us from the world’s essence, from holiness.

The only ones who do not shrink from death are saints.

To be holy is to be your perfect sovereign.

Nae Ionescu once asked about that Jew, Paul. I said: “He’s not a man; he is the entire Mediterranean.”

For three hours in the prison yard, we discussed Plato and Christ. The colonel said: “Write it down, so Interior Minister Drăghici doesn’t accuse me of solidarity.” Colonel, how can we be in solidarity? That is why I came here: we are not in solidarity with each other…

It is wrong to despise technology. I am not a technocrat, but I admit technology is universally useful for adaptation. Yet it is not infinite.

When the last peasant of all peoples is gone, the last human will be gone. Then monkeys in clothes will appear.

The peasant is the absolute man.

I told Father Stăniloaie I was not Socrates. “What do you call yourself?” A turd, I said. “Where is your parish?” “I confess wherever I can.”

Although sick and helpless, I am not sorry to exist. I try to regret it, but it is useless. Why? Because I find my existence obvious. Suicidal people have not found their humanity. They have failed to intuit their existence. To live oneself. I cannot kill myself—regardless of condition—because I did not create myself. I did not come into this world by free will; nor will I leave it by free will. That is the fundamental game of existence.

I had disciples; I could not avoid having them because I am talkative. All my suffering comes from my desire to speak freely.

A peasant in prison was asked: “What do you make of all that Petre Țuțea says?” “I do not understand anything, but it is terrible!”

When I saw that the regime in prison was ineffective against me, could I, as a human, explain that? Then I realized a supercosmic, transcendent power called God existed. Only He could have done it. Without His help, survival in prison is impossible; people have died. Then was born in me unlimited faith in divine omnipotence.

I became a Christian thinker when I realized that without revelation, without divine help, I cannot know myself, the world, its meaning, or my purpose. Without God, one cannot know the meaning of human and universal existence.

Someone asked: “Petra, when you write, how do you write?” “I am moved by the blank page. My first concern is not to be haunted by originality. I try not to be original, to be decent.” “Are you inspired?” “No; there is never a god in the corner when I write. I am restless. I am Christian. I fear careless terminology or impiety.”

I am not interested in the past. When asked my birth year, I say: “One of the last years.”

Thirteen years in prison. Only a convict’s coat. Lukewarm soup, roasted corn. Beaten. Arrested at home. I do not even remember the year. When examined, I fainted. I am glad I did not die. Three years in Internal Affairs prison, then Jilava, Ocnele Mari, Aiud. I wonder how I am still here. I often wished for death. Too cowardly to commit suicide—for religious reasons… Thirteen years! I cannot recount my suffering fully; it would offend Romanians.

An interrogator asked: “Why did you speak against us?” “I did not speak, sir.” “Why not?” “All Romanians are speaking against you. What can I say?” Sentenced to twenty years hard labor. To whom should I appeal? To God.

In prison, I was asked to write for Glasul Patriei, like Nichifor Crainic. Strange to be arrested and write, meditate. I wanted to say: thank you for arresting me! A hellish act forcing a prisoner to write. One can write memoirs, but not for the persecutor.

Culturally, I am European; spiritually, I am a peasant from Muscel. My concern in prison was not to embarrass Romanians. My generation shared this. If I were shot for stupidity, I did not care. But to stop playing the Romanian? I would let myself die. I do not know if we will be appreciated. The important thing: we never acted declaratively; we suffered for ideals. Physical suffering for an ideal is abominable.

My definition: Petre Țuțea, the Romanian. I defended Romania heroically, not diplomatically, through love and suffering. I am convinced suffering is the greatest proof of God’s love.

I collect nothing. A priest said: “You are wasting away; anyone can steal you…” I said: “Look, Father, I adopt the idea of the King of France to waste my ideas. His idea of the potato. When potatoes came from America, peasants did not grow them. ‘Let us eat this weed from the ground.’ What did the King say? ‘I sow potatoes on my land. When peasants see me guarding them, they know they are good.’ Let them steal; that is how potatoes spread.”

In the Athénée Palace lobby, I was arrested by the security police for “speculating.” Speculating what? I asked. They said nothing. I recalled a friend from Cluj: “With ideas, brother, with ideas!”

A pure humanist, religiously indifferent, practices jungle life, cruelty pushed to gratuitous tiger bestiality. Our time is full of such specimens.

Humanism is a serious form of modern man’s wandering, originating in Renaissance anthropocentrism. Titans inflated themselves through self-knowledge; they did not know themselves and thought they had discovered humanity.

Man—the bipedal dog I consider a “dumb animal,” homo stultus—when he dares to order his life, replacing God with himself. Nowhere did God confront the devil more than in sacred Italy, the birthplace of humanism.

Vlad Țepeș placed the greatest Romanian prince, Stephen the Great, on Moldavia’s throne—by force! He defeated him, and lowered absolute morality to the absolute level, putting tepees up his ass. You slept with gold on your head, fearing theft? Absolute voivod. Without him, Romanian history is a meadow of lambs.

(Petre Țuțea)