Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to manipulate both enemies and supporters.
Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
Peace is impossible, war is improbable.
Intellectuals cannot tolerate the chance event, the unintelligible: they have a nostalgia for the absolute, for a universally comprehensive scheme.
In a way, all sociologists are akin to Marxists because of their inclination to settle everyone's accounts but their own.