“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”
Variant: Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.
Source: The Wretched of the Earth
Mind and Matter (1958)
Context: To my view the ‘statistical theory of time’ has an even stronger bearing on the philosophy of time than the theory of relativity. The latter, however revolutionary, leaves untouched the undirectional flow of time, which it presupposes, while the statistical theory constructs it from the order of events. This means a liberation from the tyranny of old Chronos. What we in our minds construct ourselves cannot, so I feel, have dictatorial power over our mind, neither the power of bringing it to the fore nor the power of annihilating it. But some of you, I am sure, will call this mysticism. So with all due acknowledgement to the fact that physical theory is at all times relative, in that it depends on certain basic assumptions, we may, or so I believe, assert that physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind by Time.
“A play is a world, with its own inhabitants and its own laws and its values.”
The Time of Your Life (1939)
Hays translation
V, 7
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book V
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”
“There is no absurdity in its mental processes; all that is concealed in its assumptions.”
Source: The Gentle Reader (1903), p. 279; Regarding the thought process of quixotic societies,
Farewell letter to Fidel Castro (1965)
