I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.

All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born

How many times have I wondered if it is really possible to forge links with a mass of people when one has never had strong feelings for anyone, not even one's own parents: if it is possible to have a collectivity when one has not been deeply loved oneself by individual human creatures. Hasn't this had some effect on my life as a militant--has it not tended to make me sterile and reduce my quality as a revolutionary by making everything a matter of pure intellect, of pure mathematical calculation?

Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.

From the moment when a subordinate class becomes really independent and dominant, calling into being a new type of State, the need arises concretely, of building a new intellectual and moral order, i.e. a new type of society, and hence the need to elaborate the most universal concepts, the most refined and decisive ideological weapons.

The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum there arises a great diversity of morbid symptoms.