Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on the ‘Smug Justification of Oppression’)

“Today freedom has not many allies. I have been known to say that the real passion of the twentieth century was slavery….I…wanted to express that anguish I feel every day when faced with the decrease of liberal energies, the prostituting of words, the slandered victims, the smug justification of oppression, the insane admiration of force. We see a multiplication of those minds of whom it has been said that they seemed to count an inclination towards slavery as an ingredient of virtue. We see the intelligence seeking justifications for its fear, and finding them readily, for every cowardice has its own philosophy. Indignation is measured, silences take counsel from one another, and history has ceased to be anything but Noah's cloak that is spread over the victims' obscenity. In short, all flee real responsibility, the effort of being consistent or having an opinion of one's own, in order to take refuge in the parties or groups that will think for them, express their anger for them, and make their plans for them.”—French Nobel Literature laureate Albert Camus (1913-1960), "Homage to an Exile," originally a speech delivered Dec. 7, 1955 at a banquet in honor of President Eduardo Santos, editor of El Tiempo, driven out of Colombia by the dictatorship, republished in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays, translated by Justin O’Brien (1961)