I stressed that I did not want to be treated like a hero. I was only one member of the revolutionary masses who had fulfilled his duty towards his country. It was easy to write, rant, and mobilize people using the internet. The real heroes of this re...
The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the...
Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and lega...
The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to deat...
When calling for authenticity, we need to take seriously the brokenness and sinfulness of the human heart. If to be authentic means to be who we really are or to express what we really feel, then in most cases I’m going to vote for hypocrisy. Our p...
We came to recognize that our initial thinking about the keys to educational reform was wrong. The key variables weren’t pedagogical. They weren’t financial. They weren’t curricular. They weren’t research. They weren’t any of the usual thin...
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution unt...
[first lines] Fidel Castro: ...los que no se adapten... al esfuerzo y al heroísmo de una revolución... ¡No los queremos! ¡No los necesitamos! [in subtitles: They are unwilling to adapt to the spirit of our revolution. We don't want them! We don't...
I would advocate that chocolate be covered by health insurance, but that is admittedly a very French public policy perspective.
On the morning after the daring theft of a priceless James Ensor painting from the Grand Palais in Paris, I was allowed to leave the Les Halles Police Station after only a few hours of questioning.
There’s an enormous propaganda machine in this world,' Peter said, 'that tries to make people think love — real, earthy, sweaty love — is wrong. But how in the hell they expect to propagate the race that way is beyond me.
May you hear my feeble voice! It will tell you that here below there is a heart full of the memory of you.
I spent the period reading the first novel assigned for English. And wow. If I hadn't realized I was in France yet, I do now. Because Like Water for Chocolate has sex in it. LOTS of sex.
Men may be the head of the house, but the women are the neck, and they can turn the head any way they want.
They have a very low rate for attempted murder and a high rate for successfully concluded murder. It seems that when a French person sets out to kill someone, they make a good job of it.
I went to a French immersion school, and French-Canadian improv is a big thing, and we had an improv team at school, and 12 of us would get up and make things up against other elementary schools. I'd always wanted to perform, and that was just anothe...
I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 19...
The French are pretty thin-skinned. The few times I mentioned a French writer in 'City Boy,' the relatives would ring up in high dudgeon. I once wrote a mocking review of Marguerite Duras in the 'New York Review of Books,' and good friends of mine in...
In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to...
I have defended the interests of France at the G8 in Washington; afterwards I was at Chicago to announce the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan; I have participated in two European summits, so I have fully respected the engagements I made t...
I think London, New York, Paris, Milan, any big city has its own fashion. I don't know why they make such a big thing of Paris. I think maybe it comes from French New Wave films portraying the French girl as very feminine.