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We are living in the era of premeditation and perfect crimes. Our criminals are no longer those helpless children who pleaded love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults, and they have a perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for anything, even for transforming murderers into judges.
as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in a doctrine, as soon as he makes his crime reasonable, it multiplies like Reason herself and assumes all the figures of the syllogism. It was unique like a cry; now it is universal like science. Yesterday, it was put on trial; today it is the law.
Equally, if one denies that there are grounds for suicide, one cannot claim them for murder. One cannot be a part-time nihilist.
What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself.
Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
The rebel defies more than he denies.
Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity.
A nihilist is not someone who believes in nothing, but someone who does not believe in what he sees.
Revolutionary governments are, most of the time, obliged to be war governments. The more extensive the revolution the more considerable the chances of the war that it implies.
Total revolution ends by demanding – we shall see why – the control of the world.
Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.
The nihilism of the eighteen-sixties began, apparently, by the most radical negation imaginable: the rejection of any action which was not purely egotistic.
the origins of authoritarian doctrines are partially nihilistic.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
Gangster morality is an inexhaustible round of triumph and revenge, defeat and resentment.
Even his physical appearance, which was thoroughly mediocre and commonplace, was no limitation: it established him firmly with the masses. Action alone kept him alive. For him, to exist was to act. That is why Hitler and his régime could not dispense with enemies. They could only define themselves, frenetic dandies* that they were, in relation to their enemies and only assume their final form in the bloody battle which was to be their downfall. The Jews, the Freemasons, the plutocrats, the Anglo-Saxons, the bestial Slavs succeeded one another in their propaganda and their history as a means of
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Since Marx’s death, in any case, only a minority of disciples have remained faithful to his method. The Marxists who have made history have, on the contrary, appropriated the prophecy and the apocalyptic aspects of his doctrine in order to realize a Marxist revolution, in the exact circumstances under which Marx had foreseen that a revolution could not take place. It can be said of Marx that the greater part of his predictions came into conflict with facts as soon as his prophecies began to become an object of increasing faith.
Marx cannot pour enough scorn on bourgeois rational optimism.
When good and evil are reintegrated in time and confused with events, nothing is any longer good or bad, but only either premature or out of date.
Marxism is not scientific: at the best, it has scientific prejudices.
Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
The triumphant revolution must prove by means of its police, its trials, and its excommunications, that there is no such thing as human nature.
Art is an activity which exalts and denies simultaneously. ‘No artist tolerates reality’, says Nietzsche. That is true, but no artist can ignore reality. Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world. But it rejects the world on account of what it lacks and in the name of what it sometimes is. Rebellion can be observed here in its pure state and in its original complexities. Thus, art should give us a final perspective on the content of rebellion.
Art disputes reality, but does not hide from it.
The climax of every tragedy lies in the deafness of its heroes.
