The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.
Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 12 “Totalitarianism in Power,” sec. 3 (1951)
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anonymous
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A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher
Gravity and Grace [La Pesanteur et la Grâce], “Beauty” (1947) [ed. Thibon] [tr. Crawford/von der Ruhr (1952)]
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The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834) Welsh-English essayist
“Table Talk, by the Late Elia,” London Athenaeum (4 Jan 1834)
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