"Rhinoceros is undoubtedly an anti-Nazi play, but it is also, above all, a play against collective hysterias and epidemics that hide under the cover of reason and ideas, but which are nonetheless serious collective illnesses for which ideologies are only alibis: if we realize that history is unreasonable, that the lies of propaganda are there to mask the contradictions that exist between the facts and the ideologies that support them, if we cast a lucid eye on current events, that is enough to prevent us from succumbing to irrational "reasons", and to escape all the dizziness." JANUARY 1964 [...] I wonder if I have not put my finger on a burning wound in today's world, on a strange illness that rages in different forms, but which is the same, in its principle. Ideologies become idolatries, automatic systems of thought rise up, like a screen between the mind and reality, distort the understanding, blind. They are also barricades between man and man whom they dehumanize, and make friendship impossible despite everything between men; they prevent what is called coexistence, because a rhinoceros cannot agree with someone who is not, a sectarian with someone who is not of his sect.