Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.
Racism is the snobbery of the poor.
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.
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.