The most lasting and universal consequence of the French revolution is the metric system

Many years later, another Marxian rephrased this as the choice between socialism and barbarity. Which of these will prevail is a question which the twenty-first century must be left to answer.

It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.

The paradox of communism in power was that it was conservative.

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.

He[Napoleon] had destroyed only one thing: the Jacobin Revolution, the dream of equality, liberty and fraternity, and of the people rising in its majesty to shake off oppression. It was a more powerful myth than his, for after his fall it was this, and not his memory, which inspired the revolutions of the nineteenth century, even in his own country.

There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.