Camus on Innocence

In simpler times, when a tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through a jubilant city, when enemies were cast before the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the popular conscience remained clear before such candid crimes, and judgment was clear. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by the love of mankind or by a taste for the superhuman, in a certain sense impair that judgment. On the day when crime cloaks itself in innocence — through a curious transposition peculiar to our times — it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.

- Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté (1951) in Essais (Pléiade ed.) pp. 413-414 (S.H. transl.)