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

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.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

In a way, all sociologists are akin to Marxists because of their inclination to settle everyone's accounts but their own.

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