“I don’t really believe in dialogue; I am too Nietzschean for that. We need to have a warrior conception of philosophy.”

I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, “All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book”? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.

There is a true weakness in American thought today: their incapacity to be interested in the intelligence of evil.

In general, Europeans need to get a wider perspective on the problem of Islamism.

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

God is dead but my hair is perfect.

A politician has finally understood that politics is not only about the closing of a mine in Ohio-it is also about the will to reach out, to embrace the world of today’s young Americans. That way, young Americans may eventually reconcile with politics.

The terrorists exist, and I think we must speak to them, not to establish a dialogue-since for serious terrorists that is unfortunately out of the question – but to learn how their brains work, to be better able to fight them.

Look at writer and political theorist Charles Maurras in France. The philosopher Martin Heidegger in Germany. The radical Islamists of today!

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.

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

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

I reject the idea that there is some sort of existential “clash of civilizations.” I am an interventionist, but not a militarist. War should always be a last resort.

France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.

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

The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.

Why should an intellectual have to renounce the pleasures of life? I am not a hermit. I am a man of flesh and blood. In fact, if you look at my name in French, that schizophrenia, that aspiration to several lives is contained in my name. Lévy is also les vies – “the lives”.

It makes me sad, sad inside, to see a warrior without his pride.

The world is witnessing first hand, live on television, the hearts of American warriors and the spirit and pride only displayed by magnificent young men and women who are volunteers in the fight for the cause of freedom. Its all about heart.

With intent to neither idolize nor demonize the man [Barack Obama], it seems fair and evident enough to say that the current president of America is not a leader whose way is that of violent public outbursts.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.

The mere size of the brain has been proved to be no measure of superiority.

She is love in its purest form; her arms, the safest place I’ve known. She is the scent of home; the warrior who carried me in her womb.

I tamed the dragon, that had a heart of a marshmallow, with eyes that glowed with naughtiness.

I stood in the face of fear, with the smirk on my face, baiting it to have a go, so that I can embed my soul in the very aura that kept threatening my sanity.