#126

“Every ambiguity, every misunderstanding leads to death; clear language and simple words are to only salvation from this death (it is worth noting that the language peculiar to totalitarian doctrines is always scholastic or administrative language)” (id, 283).

#125

“Every act of creation, by its mere existence, denies the world of master and slave” (id, 274).

#124

“There is really nothing mysterious about the principle that consists in using scientific reasoning to the advantage of a prophecy. This has already been named the principle of authority, and it is this that guides the Churches when they which to subject living reason to dead faith and freedom of the intellect to the maintenance of temporal power” (id, 222).

#123

“Work in which one can have an interest, creative work, even though it is badly paid, does not degrade life” (id, 216).

#122

“This is the real condemnation of our society, the anguish of death is a luxury that is felt far more by the idler than by the worker, who is stifled by his own occupation. But every kind of socialism is Utopian, most of all scientific socialism. Utopia replaces God by the future. Then proceeds to identify the future with ethics; the only values are those which serve this particular future. For that reason Utopias have almost always been coercive and authoritarian” (id, 208).

#120

“The conqueror is always right; that is one of the most important German philosophical system of the nineteenth century” (id, 137).

#119

“In theory, the word revolution retains the meaning that it has in astronomy. It is a movement that describes a complete circle, that leads from one form of government to another after a complete transition” (id, 106).

#118

“Socialism is only a degenerate form of Christianity. In fact, it preserves a belief in the finality of history which substitutes ideal ends for real ends, and contributes to enervating both the will and the imagination” (id, 69).

#117

“The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear on earth, but it will be ruled over by men – a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cæsars, because they were the first to understand – and later, with time, by all men” (id, 60).

#116

“The romantic hero first of all brings about the profound and, so to speak, religious blending of good and evil. This type of hero is “fatal” because fate confounds good and evil without man being able to prevent it. Fate does not allow judgments of value. It replaces them by the statement that “It is so” – which excuses everything, with the exception of the Creator, who alone is responsible for this scandalous state of affairs” (id, 47-48).

#115

“The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities” (id, 20).

#114

“Beyond a doubt, certain characteristics of the Promethean myth still survive in the history of rebellion as we are living it: the fight against death (“I have delivered a men from being obsessed with death”), Messianism (“I have instilled hopes into men's minds”), philanthropy (“Enemy of Zeus... for having loved mankind too much”)” (id, 26-27).

#113

“It [absurdism] is contradictory in its content because, in wanting to uphold life, it excludes all value judgments, when live is, in itself, a vale judgment. To breathe is to judge. Perhaps it is untrue to to say that life is a perpetual choice. But it is true that it impossible to imagine a life deprived of all choice” (id, 8).

#112

“If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism. Of course, there have been peridos of history in which the passion for life was so strong that it burst forth in criminal excesses” (Camus, 1957: 6-7).

CAMUS, Albert (1957). The Rebel. Translation by Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books.