The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility. – Georges Bataille
Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to ones rage whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them. – Georges Bataille
The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil. – Georges Bataille
I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction. – Georges Bataille
Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his masters commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too personal style. – W. H. Auden