The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.

I want to paint a canvasthat will be nothing but harmonious tone.

The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.

When will we learn that childhood is in a great sense not simply a preparation for adult life but a thing unique and complete in itself—a masterpiece of God.

The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression of Proudhon’s: whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat. To confiscate the word humanity, to invoke and monopolize such a term probably has certain incalculable effects, such as denying the enemy the quality of being human and declaring him to be an outlaw of humanity; and a war can thereby be driven to the most extreme inhumanity.

All law is situational law. The sovereign produces and guarantees the situation in its totality. He has the monopoly over this last decision.