What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

Intellectuals cannot tolerate the chance event, the unintelligible: they have a nostalgia for the absolute, for a universally comprehensive scheme.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

The intellectual who no longer feels attached to anything is not satisfied with opinion merely; he wants certainty, he wants a system. The revolution provides him with his opium.

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

Foreknowledge of the future makes it possible to manipulate both enemies and supporters.