I would hope that Europe always has a privileged relationship with the United States. The alternatives are not attractive.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVYThe 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.
More Bernard-Henri Levy Quotes
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I definitely don’t agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States – this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
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”.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
I am 60, and I am as much an internationalist as when I was younger, when I was a Marxist-Leninist. Internationalism is one of the rare pieces of that heritage to which I remain loyal. That is Barack Obama’s strength.
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The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
Even Colombia – where the dead have no faces and literally cannot be counted. Theirs are minuscule lives moving toward imperceptible deaths. For me, it is the essence of tragedy.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
For me, dressing is always a question of principle, respect, a sense of order, not to disguise myself, even in rotten places.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
You can be horrified by the state of the prisons, the misery in certain neighborhoods of its cities, or their level of poverty.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
Even if the Israel-Palestine question were solved – and I think and hope that one day soon it will be – this wouldn’t stop one person from becoming a terrorist.
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Look at writer and political theorist Charles Maurras in France. The philosopher Martin Heidegger in Germany. The radical Islamists of today!
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It’s true that in France there is always this ridiculous complex about money. Money is cursed, shameful, money disqualifies you . . . In America, even though it is a Protestant country, it’s the opposite.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
America creates myths by focusing a lot of energy on its history and using it – – not always, but sometimes – for constructive purposes.
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France is a country where thinking is supposed to be furtive, invisible, almost clandestine. France is a country of cliques and sects.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
In general, Europeans need to get a wider perspective on the problem of Islamism.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY