Jean-François Revel > Quotes

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”
― Jean-Francois Revel

“A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.”
― Jean-François Revel

“Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.”
― Jean-François Revel

“The history of philosophy can be divided into two different periods. During the first, philosophers sought the truth; during the second, they fought against it.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information

“Ideology is a mechanism for rejecting facts when the threaten to force a reexamination of cherished dogma. And it invents facts when necessary to the survival of the dogma.”
― Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism

“the mind plays the essential role in satisfaction and dissatisfaction, happiness and suffering, fulfillment and failure. The mind is behind every experience in life. It is also what determines the way we see the world. The mind is the window from which we see ‘our’ world. It only takes the slightest change in our minds, in our way of perceiving people and things, for that world to be turned completely upside-down.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.”
― Jean-François Revel, Last Exit to Utopia: The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is
and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself”
― Jean Francois Revel

“But the dominant idea today among scientists is that such dualism infringes the laws of conservation of energy by supposing that a nonmaterial object can influence a material system.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and "fascist", while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.”
― Jean-François Revel

“People who've been on the left for a long time no longer have a coherent doctrine for transforming society, and so they've seized hold of humanitarian action and the environment in order to continue tyrannizing their peers.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“So the pattern of our emotions is determined by the way we perceive reality.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“it’s a metaphysical choice that science makes when it states that with the help of our concepts we can discover the ultimate nature of a phenomenal world that exists independently of our concepts.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“The first of all the forces that rule the world is the lie (fabrication/fib).”
― Jean-François Revel, El conocimiento inútil

“Suffering is the result of ignorance, so it’s ignorance that has to be dissipated. And ignorance, in essence, is belief in a truly existing self and in the solidity of phenomena.”
― Jean-François Revel, The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life

“De El libro tibetano de la vida y de la muerte, de Sogyal Rimpoché,[21] se han publicado casi un millón de ejemplares y ha sido traducido a veintiséis lenguas. J. F. – ¿Es un libro antiguo, un libro clásico? M. – No, no es una traducción del clásico Libro tibetano de los muertos, el Bardo Thödrol, que explica el estado de transición después de la muerte. El libro tibetano de la vida y de la muerte es una exposición clara y sencilla de”
― Jean Francois Revel, El monje y el filósofo

“Per poter aiutare gli altri, bisogna che non vi sia più alcuna differenza tra ciò che si insegna e ciò che si è.”
― Jean-François Revel, Il monaco e il filosofo: Laicità e buddismo a confronto: un dialogo tra padre e figlio sul senso della vita

“The strange thing is that it's always in Europe that dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up, yet it's always America that is 'fascist.”
― Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism