" The massacres which accompany the struggle of States and of classes will not have been in vain if they clear the way to the classless society. The idolatry of history is born of this unavowed nostalgia for a future which would justify the unjustifiable. (...)
...
... The idolater of history (...), convinced that it acts with a view to achieving the only future which is worthwhile, sees, and wants to see, the other merely as an enemy to be eliminated, and a contemptible enemy at that since he is incapable of wanting the good or of recognising it. "

― Raymond Aron , The Opium of the Intellectuals