RAYMOND ARON

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

Strategy draws its inspiration each century, or rather at each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves pose.

Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Intellectuals cannot tolerate the chance event, the unintelligible: they have a nostalgia for the absolute, for a universally comprehensive scheme.

The intellectual who no longer feels attached to anything is not satisfied with opinion merely; he wants certainty, he wants a system. The revolution provides him with his opium.

Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to manipulate both enemies and supporters.

In a way, all sociologists are akin to Marxists because of their inclination to settle everyone's accounts but their own.

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to manipulate both enemies and supporters.

Intellectuals cannot tolerate the chance event, the unintelligible: they have a nostalgia for the absolute, for a universally comprehensive scheme.

Strategy draws its inspiration each century, or rather at each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves pose.

In a way, all sociologists are akin to Marxists because of their inclination to settle everyone's accounts but their own.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

The intellectual who no longer feels attached to anything is not satisfied with opinion merely; he wants certainty, he wants a system. The revolution provides him with his opium.

Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.