« What is European about our Europe aligned, covered with a blue coat of supermarkets, the successor to the white cloak of churches, with, here and there, and in addition to soul, museums with advantageous forms, where to come and fulfill by yawning its cultural obligations? There was more Europe in the age of monasteries, when the Irish Colomban came to sow his abbeys all over the continent. Moreover, at the Battle of Lepante, when Savoyards, Genoese, Romans, Venetians and Spaniards rushed to battle against the great Turk's fleet, under the leadership of Don Juan of Austria. More in the peaceful age of the Enlightenment, when Voltaire came to beat the cardboard at Sans-Souci with Frederick II, or when Diderot tapped on the shoulder of Catherine II in St. Petersburg. More, in the age of the Imperial Travellers, when Clara Zetkin stirred the hearts of French workers, and Jaurès, the German Socialist Congresses. Russian and German were taught five times more in our high schools in 1950 than they are today; there were more Italy in France and France in Italy than there are now. We follow the events of American domestic politics day by day, and a coughing cough of Mrs. Clinton on the campaign trail opens our newscasts, but we don't have ten seconds for a change of landscape in Romania or the Czech Republic. Broadcast satellites and our intellectual laziness put New York on our landing, Warsaw in the steppe and Moscow in Kamchatka. »

« Every kind of republic has its history, and you can't choose your model of democracy the way you choose a clothing brand in a store. »

« Secularism puts a line between "what I know" and "what I believe," between the realm of the mind and the realm of souls. »