Albert Camus, Nobel Prize Winner 1957

"I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood.  I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive."--A.Camus, letter to a German friend, 1938 

 

 

And this quote by Camus, on the first anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising against the overwhelming power of the Soviet Union in 1956, rings true even more 49 years later when we remember the evils of totalitarianism and when the few real republican democracies  still face one of its offshoots, in a preverted "people's  state" called North Korea:

 

"There are already too many dead on the field, and we cannot be generous with any but our own blood. The blood of Hungary has re-emerged too precious to Europe and to freedom for us not to be jealous of it to the last drop.

"But I am not one of those who think that there can be a compromise, even one made with resignation, even provisional, with a regime of terror which has as much right to call itself socialist as the executioners of the Inquisition had to call themselves Christians.

"And on this anniversary of liberty, I hope with all my heart that the silent resistance of the people of Hungary will endure, will grow stronger, and, reinforced by all the voices which we can raise on their behalf, will induce unanimous international opinion to boycott their oppressors."