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

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.

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.

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

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Your heart has a powerful little antenna and its pulses and vibrations can be felt throughout the universe.

Laughter is the only medicine, without side effects.

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one's nose, taking shortcuts.

Luckily for me I have a very supportive family and a loving group of friends.

Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

My folks were English . . . we were too poor to be British.

The more you ride the bike, the better it gets, and the more you know how to ride it.

There's more than one way to be a girl

If a man does not work at necessary and good things, then he will work at unnecessary and stupid things

Mr. President, call the toady of American imperialism to order.