This is a large part of the academic profession: to make up complex, subtle arguments that are childishly ridiculous but are enveloped in sufficient profundity that they take on a kind of plausibility.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That's human nature.

A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should have the rights of persons.

My own concern is primarily the terror and violence carried out by my own state... It is very easy to denounce the atrocities of someone else. That has about as much ethical value as denouncing atrocities that took place in the 18th century.

I can understand the idea that there is a conspiracy. In fact, in much of the world there is a sense of an ultra-powerful CIA manipulating everything that happens, such as running the Arab Spring, running the Pakistani Taliban, etc. That is just nonsense. They [CIA] created a monster and now they are appalled by it.

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

If you are giving a graduate course you don't try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.