Quotes from Bernard-Henri Levy

The euro is a great achievement. It's a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.

Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well.

America creates myths by focusing a lot of energy on its history and using it - - not always, but sometimes - for constructive purposes.

I would hope that Europe always has a privileged relationship with the United States. The alternatives are not attractive.

I really like the United State, its relationship to space and time, its interest in mobility, its cosmopolitanism.

For me, dressing is always a question of principle, respect, a sense of order, not to disguise myself, even in rotten places.

N"ayez pas peur du kamikaze. Ce qui l'intéresse dans le risque de mort, ce n'est pas le risque, c'est la mort. Ce qu'il aime dans la guerre, ce n'est pas "vaincre ou mourir" mais mourir et ne surtout pas vaincre. Sa grande affaire, ce n'est pas, comme dit Clausewitz, proportionner des efforts à la force de résistance de l'ennemi, le renverser, le réduire - mais mourir. (ch. 16 Debray, Kojève et le prix du sang)

there is a suicidal weakness in the relationship between the democracies and war; that our first reflex, when the alarm sounds and well-armed and determined adversaries trample our values underfoot, is to do nothing at all.

I was expressing the fear that America could become just another country, bigger than most, more powerful, grappling with myths that were a little more outsized than the others, but all in all a country like another, with a president who, seventy-five years ago and in the grip of the original America First, might not have waged war against Nazism.

Anti-Semitism being what it is—a continuously mutating virus, an incurable form of madness

Yes, sin-ah, without the final yod that is also one of the letters in the name of God.

They knew that Pascal's room, Thoreau's hut, and especially their own den was a dark chamber, an unhealthy space full of resentment; they knew that one is nothing when alone, that one thinks most often of nothing at all, and that hell is not other people, but the self.

I remember stony landscapes in which I sensed the mysterious imprint left by eyes that had looked on them for centuries upon centuries before me

Primeiro, repito, os vírus são estúpidos; os vírus são cegos; os vírus não existem para contar histórias aos seres humanos ou retransmitir as dos seus maus pastores; e, portanto, não há nenhuma <>, nenhuma < >, nenhum <> que vá resultar de uma pandemia (...). p.48

The great crocodiles of the Bosporus, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Yangtze, and the Volga are squaring off against Little Boy; in the wildest of their schemes, they see themselves taking him down in one bite.

In Europe, it's a done deal. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's social contract is being slowly but surely replaced by a life contract inspired by Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism and the "panopticon" of his surveillance state.

La Fin de l'Histoire ce n'est pas le bonheur mais l'horreur. Ce n'est pas le premier matin mais le dernier. Ce n'est pas l'euphorie perpétuelle mais les flammes de l'enfer. (ch. 25 Hegel et Kojève africains)

la forme moderne de l'antisémitisme n'est-elle pas très précisément dans le déni de l'évidence ? l'antisémitisme moderne n'a-t-il pas pour article de foi quasi premier cette terrible adresse aux vivants : la Shoah ne fut pas ce que vous dites ; elle ne fut, en aucune manière, ce crime exorbitant à la longue histoire des crimes (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

il y a toute cette autre pensée de la guerre, non pas virile, exaltante, source de grandeur ou d'accomplissement de soi, mais tout simplement nécessaire car l'alternative à cette guerre ce ne serait pas la paix mais l'enfer...(ch. 5 La nostalgie de la guerre)

Je n'ai jamais compris comment les guerres pouvaient faire tant de morts quand les chocs frontaux y sont finalement si rares. Je n'ai jamais plus admiré un récit de guerre qu'Hommage à la Catalogne de George Orwell parce qu'il raconte, justement, cette loi de l'attente et de la patience qui est la loi no 1 des combattants. (ch. 12 Les mots de la guerre)

reassembling the last pieces of the puzzle, I discovered something almost worse than nonintervention, blindness, and betrayal: when America decided to react, when it seemed to take the measure of the rout that it was inflicting on itself and finally spoke up, however timidly, its words fell flat and were ignored.

A time is coming that is no longer the time that emerged from the death of communism, from the triumph of liberal values, and from the pronounced "end of history," an ending to which I never subscribed but that was beginning to take on a truly sinister face.

l'Histoire a plus d'imagination que les hommes ? le Diable plus que l'Histoire ? et il n'est pas du genre, le Diable, à commettre l'erreur d'amateur de nous resservir un génocide en tous points semblable à l'étalon du genre ? (ch. 57 La Shoah au coeur et dans la tête)

Venezuela, a state that is a calamity for Venezuelans and a friend of the most shunned regimes (Pakistan, of course, along with North Korea, Iran, Russia, and others just as odious), while also being the architect of the farcical "Bolivarian alliance.