The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. |
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. |
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom ''charitable'' souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case. |
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions. |
The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude. |
The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all |
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. |
The society based on production is only productive, not creative. |
The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial. |
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. |
The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart swell. |
The truth, as the light, makes blind. |
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience |
The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge. |
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody. |