Status Updates From Create Dangerously

“Of that, at least, we shall henceforth be sure, as we shall be sure that freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.”

“No, freedom is not founded on concentration camps, or on the subjugated peoples of thecolonies, or on the workers' poverty! No, the doves of peace do not perch on gallows! No, the forces of freedom cannot mingle the sons of the victims with the executioners of Madrid and elsewhere!”

“The way ahead of us is long. Yet if war does not come and mingle everything in its hideous con-fusion, we shall have time at last to give a form to the justice and freedom we need. But to achieve that we must henceforth categorically refuse, without anger but irrevocably, the lies with which we have been stuffed.”

“They often say that they are defending freedom, but they are defending first of all the privileges freedom gives to them, and to them alone.”

“Choosing freedom is not, as we are told, choosing against justice. On the other hand, freedom is chosen today in relation to those who are everywhere suffering and fighting, and this is the only freedom that counts. It is chosen at the same time as justice, and, to tell the truth, henceforth we cannot choose one without the other.”

“After all, there is probably not one of us here who, either in deed or in thought, did not succumb. But history has progressed, and what we have seen must now make us think things over.”

“Freedom is the concern of the oppressed, and her natural protectors have always come from among the oppressed.”

“The simplest, and hence most tempting, thing is to blame governments or some obscure powers for such naughty behavior. Besides, it is indeed true that they are guilty. But they are not the only ones responsible. After all, if freedom had always had to rely on governments to encourage her growth, she would probably be still in her infancy or else buried with the inscription 'another angel in heaven.’”

“our history is rather one of slavery than of freedom and that the world we live in is the one that has just been described, which leaps out at us from the newspaper every morning to make of our days and our weeks a single day of revolt and disgust.”

“Then perhaps, in a nation that is free and passionately attached to truth, man will begin again to have that feeling for man, without which the world can never be but a vast solitude.”

“I should like them not to give in when they are told that intelligence is always unwelcome
or that it is permissible to lie in order to succeed. I should like them not to give in to guile, to violence, or to inertia.“

“For friendship is a knowledge acquired by free men. And there is no freedom without intelligence or without mutual understanding.”

“We are speaking of the kind that is backed by courage, the kind that for four years paid whatever was necessary to have the right to respect.
When that intelligence is snuffed out, the black night of dictatorship begins. This is why we must maintain it with all its duties and all its rights. “

“Even now intelligence is ill-treated. This proves simply that the enemy is not yet conquered. If you merely make an effort to understand without pre-conceptions, if you merely talk of objectivity, you will be accused of sophistry and criticized for having pretensions. No, we can't have that! That is what must be reformed.“

“Not giving in to hatred, not making any concessions to violence, not allowing our passions to become blind - these are the things we can still do for friendship”

“Well, this is what we must overcome first of all, Our poison hearts must be cured. And the most difficult battle to be won against the enemy in the future must be fought within ourselves, with an exceptional effort that will transform our appetite for hatred into a desire for justice.”

“We were left with the rage that consumes our souls at the memory of certain images and certain faces. The executioners' hatred engendered the victims' hatred. And once the executioners had gone, the French were left with their hatred only partially spent. They still look at one another with a residue of anger.”

“what always stands in the way of friendship - in other words, falsehood and hatred.”

“I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundation of his own sufferings and joys, builds for all.”

“Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man.“

“'Every wall is a door,' Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is - in the very thick of the battle.”

“For this purpose, we must assume all the risks and labours of freedom. There is no need of knowing whether, by pursuing justice, we shall manage to preserve liberty. It is essential to know that, without liberty, we shall achieve nothing and that we shall lose both future justice and ancient beauty. Liberty alone draws men from their isolation; but slavery dominates a crowd of solitudes.”

“Like all freedom, it is a perpetual risk, an exhausting adventure, and this is why people avoid the risk today, as they avoid liberty with its exacting demands, in order to accept any kind of bondage and achieve at least comfort of soul. But if art is not an adventure, what is it and where is its justification?”

“That's just it and yet that's not it; the world is nothing and the world is everything - this is the contradictory and tireless cry of every true artist, the cry that keeps him on his feet with eyes ever open and that, every once in a while, awakens for all in this world asleep the fleeting and insistent image of a reality we recognize without ever having known it.”