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 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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Anti-Americanism, by which I mean a hatred for America as such-its transformation into a metaphysical category, which incarnates all the evil in the world-is one of fascism’s favorite themes.
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Even if it doesn’t sound like it at first, that’s an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.
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God is dead but my hair is perfect.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY -
The European Union should not be prescribing an identity. We know what that’s like, when a government tells its people how it should look; what it should be doing. That’s the first step towards totalitarianism.
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I would sooner want a strong partnership with the United States – even with (US President George W.) Bush, who I think is the worst president in a long, long time. I would sooner want a friendship with Bush than with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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I really like the United State, its relationship to space and time, its interest in mobility, its cosmopolitanism.
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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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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.
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I don’t really believe in dialogue; I am too Nietzschean for that. We need to have a warrior conception of philosophy.
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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 -
The euro is a great achievement. It’s a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY






