“He’ll always be innocent, you can’t blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.”

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up

"Reflections on Gandhi" (1949)
Context: Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases. In Gandhi's case the questions one feels inclined to ask are: to what extent was Gandhi moved by vanity — by the consciousness of himself as a humble, naked old man, sitting on a praying mat and shaking empires by sheer spiritual power — and to what extent did he compromise his own principles by entering politics, which of their nature are inseparable from coercion and fraud? To give a definite answer one would have to study Gandhi's acts and writings in immense detail, for his whole life was a sort of pilgrimage in which every act was significant.

Athenäum (1798 - 1800)
Source: “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #31

Source: NOS4A2

2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009

Source: The Garden of Eden

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 183.

On ne peut point régner innocemment : la folie en est trop évidente. Tout roi est un rebelle et un usurpateur.
Sur le jugement de Louis XVI (1er discours) http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/stjust_jugement_louis16_1_13_11_92.htm, speech to the National Convention (November 13, 1792).

"'Disgrace,' Ctd.," http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/06/sweeping-and-wr.html The Daily Dish (19 June 2008)