Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

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.

Racism is the snobbery of the poor.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

Oh to have you with me, to have you here, not to be alone, but to be with you, my beauty, you of all souls! You.

Big skirmishes over small misunderstanding make things bad in a relationship.

Concentrate on defense because the offense will come.

I'm close with my parents. I have a lot of acquaintances, but my very good close friends are few I can count my very good friends on one hand. And that's how I like it to be.

Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.

Discipline is not only very important, it's crucial.

I hate, loathe and despise schools.School is bad for you if you have any talent. You should be cultivating that talent in your own particular way.

What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.

Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all. The comic element works as a surprise. It is unexpected and energizing.