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1 " Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself. "
― Jean-François Revel
2 " 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. "
3 " Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it. "
4 " 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
5 " 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 , El conocimiento inútil
6 " 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
7 " Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it isand does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself "
8 " So the pattern of our emotions is determined by the way we perceive reality. "
9 " 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. "
10 " Per poter aiutare gli altri, bisogna che non vi sia più alcuna differenza tra ciò che si insegna e ciò che si è. "
11 " 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. "
12 " 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. "
13 " 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
14 " 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. "
15 " 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. "
16 " Consideremos, por ejemplo, la omnipotencia, pues un creador ha de ser onmipotente: o bien el creador no decide crear, y en ese caso pierde su omnipotencia, pues la creación se hace sin el concurso de su voluntad, o bien crea voluntariamente y ya no es todo poderoso, porque crea bajo la influencia del deseo de crear. "
17 " Buddhism affirms that the ultimate nature of phenomena is emptiness and that emptiness carries within it an infinite potential of manifestation. "
