Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron / 1905–1983 / Paris, France / Sociologist, Political Philosopher, Historian, Journalist
Democracy
Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.
Plaidoyer pour l’Europe décadente (1977) / In Defense of Decadent Europe (1977).
The democracy of the rich and the democracy of the poor have this in common: both accept a certain inequality as compatible with democracy.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
We are all convinced that ‘democratic’ means, as a matter of course, good. We are all convinced that “totalitarian: means, as a matter of course, bad.”
Les guerres en chaîne (1951) / The Century of Total War (1954).
Doubt
If tolerance is born of doubt, let us teach everyone to doubt all the models and utopias, to challenge all the prophets of redemption and the heralds of catastrophe.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Foreign Policy
The test of a country’s greatness is its attitude towards small nations.
Source unknown.
Anyone who does not see that there is a “struggle for power” element is naïve; anyone who sees nothing but this aspect is a false realist.
Démocratie et totalitarisme (1965) / Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968).
Yesterday’s enemy is today’s friend. There is no reasonable politics without the ability to forget.
La Paix et la guerre entre les nations (1962) / Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (1966).
In politics, shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Freedom
Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.
Démocratie et totalitarisme (1965) / Democracy and Totalitarianism (1968).
Freedom flourishes in temperate zones; it does not survive the burning faith of prophets and crowds.
Thinking Politically: Liberalism in the Age of Ideology (1997).
French Politics
I did not deny the fact that there was a distinction between the right and the left in the National Assembly. What I denied was that there was an eternal left, the same in various historical circumstances, inspired by the same values, united by the same aspirations.
Mémoires: 50 ans de réflexion politique (1983) / Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection (1997).
History
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
La Paix et la guerre entre les nations (1962) / Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (1966).
History is the science of what never happens twice.
Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire: Essai sur les limites de l’objectivité historique (1938) / Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity (1961).
Europeans would like to escape from their history, a “great” history written in letters of blood. But others, by the hundreds of millions, are taking it up for the first time, or coming back to it.
Source unknown.
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 recognizing it.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
The historian is an expert, not a physicist. He does not seek the causes of the explosion in the expansive force of gases, but in the smoker’s match.
Source unknown.
Human Nature
Every great crisis reveals the excessive preoccupations of men.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even acquire their own judgment.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
There is no apprenticeship to misfortune. When it strikes us, we still have everything to learn.
Source unknown.
Ideology
The man who no longer expects miraculous changes either from a revolution or from an economic plan is not obliged to resign himself to the unjustifiable. It is because he likes individual human beings, participates in communities, and respects the truth, that he refuses to surrender his soul to an abstract ideal of humanity, a tyrannical party, and an absurd scholasticism.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Intellectuals
The intellectual . . . must try never to forget the arguments of the adversary, or the uncertainty of the future, or the faults of one’s own side, or the underlying fraternity of ordinary men everywhere.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Rationalism
The rationalist is not unaware of the animal impulses in man, and of the passions of man in society. The rationalist has long since abandoned the illusion that men, alone or in groups, are reasonable. He bets on the education of humanity, even if he is not sure he will win his wager.”
Politics and History: Selected Essays (1978).
Revolutionaries
Profoundly moralistic in regard to the present, the revolutionary is cynical in action. He protests against police brutality, the inhuman rhythm of industrial production, the severity of bourgeois courts, the execution of prisoners whose guilt has not been proved beyond doubt. Nothing, short of a total “humanization,” can appease his hunger for justice. But as soon as he decides to give his allegiance to a party which is as implacably hostile as he is himself to the established disorder, we find him forgiving, in the name of the Revolution, everything he has hitherto relentlessly denounced. The revolutionary myth bridges the gap between moral intransigence and terrorism.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Are revolutions worthy of so much honor? The men who conceive them are not those who carry them out. Those who begin them rarely live to see their end, except in exile or in prison. Can they really be the symbol of a humanity which is the master of its own destiny if no man recognizes his handiwork in the achievement which results from the savage free-for-all struggle?
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Skepticism
If they can abolish fanaticism, let us pray for the advent of the sceptics.
L’opium des intellectuels (1955) / The Opium of the Intellectuals (1957).
Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.
Source unknown.