In other times, the philosopher who did not write but thought incurred no scorn thereby; ever since we began prostrating ourselves before the effective, the work has become the absolute of vulgarity; those who produce none are regarded as failures. But such failures would have been the sages of another age; they will redeem ours by having left no traces.
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A millennium of warfare consolidated the West; a century of "psychology" has ripped it to tatters.
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Our disease being history's, the disease of history's eclipse, we must fall back on Valery's remark, must exacerbate its bearing: we know, now, that all civilization is mortal, that we are hurtling toward horizons of apoplexy, toward the miracles of the worst, toward the golden age of terror.
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When the mob espouses a myth, expect a massacre or, worse still, a new religion.
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Without its assiduity to the ridiculous, would the human race have lasted more than a single generation?