His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Sleep is no longer a healing bath, a recuperation of vital forces, but an oblivion, a nightly brush with annihilation.

To me, a philosopher who says that the distinction between human and nonhuman depends on whether you have a white or a black skin, and a philosopher who says that the distinction between human and nonhuman depends on whether or not you know the difference between a subject and a predicate, are more alike than they are unlike.

I say that I represent this movement because my intellectual allegiances are clearly European, not African.

Become major, Paul. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise what is life for?

The mode of consciousness of nonhuman species is quite different from human consciousness.

I don't think we are ready to die, any of us, not without being escorted.