Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.

Being is good, but getting rich is better.... If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as poor Caligula.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.

When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.