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

Bernard-Henri Levy

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

Country Invisible Suppose Thinking
The euro is a great achievement. It’s a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Achievement Constitution Opportunity
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

Civilization Ideas War
The only successful revolution of this century is totalitarianism.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Rebellious Revolution Successful
I would hope that Europe always has a privileged relationship with the United States. The alternatives are not attractive.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Alternative Country United States
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

Intellectual Men Schizophrenia
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Country Identity Sound
America creates myths by focusing a lot of energy on its history and using it – – not always, but sometimes – for constructive purposes.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Country Energy Purpose
Look at writer and political theorist Charles Maurras in France. The philosopher Martin Heidegger in Germany. The radical Islamists of today!
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Country Look Political Radical Today
In general, Europeans need to get a wider perspective on the problem of Islamism.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Country Perspective Religious Stop Terrorist Thinking
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

Brain Fighting Thinking
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Book School Writing
Each time a Palestinian or an Israeli dies, it is terrible. But they have the right to have a funeral, to be buried, to have a place in the memory of the survivors. And then you have these other places – Darfur, Rwanda.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Each Funeralmpalestian Memories Moving Time
I really like the United State, its relationship to space and time, its interest in mobility, its cosmopolitanism.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Cosmopolitanism Interest Space Time
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Book Vacation Writing
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.
BERNARD-HENRI LEVY

Government Identity People

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

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

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