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

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.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

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.

In writing if it takes over 30 minutes to write the first two paragraphs select another subject.

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.

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

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

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Even among the ugliness of evil that resonated throughout the green hills and flowering landscape, Northbrook was simply breathtaking to those who took the time to appreciate it.

Each moment only once

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you wish to write, write.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

Love is madness, and lust is poison.

My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.

Thought makes everything fit for use.

I think literature is somehow both a fantasy and a reality we should all get back to.