Camille

“In the whole of the world and of the people there is no room for fear. For fear can only enter a part that has been separates from the whole, the dying link torn from the link that is born. The whole of the people and if the world is triumphantly gay and fearless. This whole speaks in all carnival images...”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

“Early on, I learnt from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life lies in conscious participation in the making of history. The more I think of that, the more deeply true it seems to be. It follows that one must range oneself actively against everything that diminishes man, and involve oneself in all struggles which tend to liberate and enlarge him. This categorical imperative is by no way lessened by the fact that such an involvement is inevitably soiled by error: it is a worse error merely to live for oneself, caught within traditions which are soiled by inhumanity.”
― Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

“Non seulement les lettres pures, mais aussi les utopies de la Renaissance, sa conception même du monde étaient profondément imprégnées de la perception du monde carnavalesque et en revêtaient souvent les formes et les symboles.”
― Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World

“So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides the best example) and the advance of knowledge sooner or later undermines the traditional order. Confused thinking, on the other hand, leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.”
― Stanislav Andreski, Social sciences as sorcery