Raymond Aron quotes:

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Europeans would like to escape from their history, a "great" history written in letters of blood. But others, by the hundreds of millions, are taking it up for the first time, or coming back to it.

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

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.

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.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

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

In writing if it takes over 30 minutes to write the first two paragraphs select another subject.

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.