Jean-François Revel Quotes

Jean-François Revel was a French journalist, philosopher, and a member of the Académie française from June 1998 onwards. A socialist in his youth, Revel later became a prominent European proponent of classical liberalism and free market economics.

Revel is best known for his books Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information and his 2002 book Anti-Americanism, one year after the September 11 attacks of 2001. In the last of these books, Revel criticized anti-Americanism and Europeans who argued that the United States had brought the terrorist attacks upon itself by misguided foreign policies: "Obsessed by their hatred and floundering in illogicality, these dupes forget that the United States, acting in its own self-interest, is also acting in the interest of us Europeans and in the interests of many other countries which are threatened, or have already been subverted and ruined, by terrorism."

In 1975, he delivered the Huizinga Lecture in Leiden, Netherlands, under the title La tentation totalitaire . Wikipedia  

✵ 19. January 1924 – 30. April 2006
Jean-François Revel photo
Jean-François Revel: 23   quotes 1   like

Famous Jean-François Revel Quotes

“Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is working to destroy it.”

Cited in The Effects of Mass Immigration On Canadian Living Standards and Society (2009). ed. Grubel, The Frasier Institute, pp. 202-203 ISBN 088975246X, 9780889752467
1980s, How Democracies Perish (1983)

Jean-François Revel Quotes

“It is clear that international law must evolve, even if it will be difficult to find the new and appropriate notions that will allow it to … However, it is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are.”

Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse (1993), Revel, Free Press (1993), p. 264 ISBN 0029263875, 9780029263877
1990s, Democracy Against Itself: The Future of the Democratic Impulse (1993)

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

This quote was used, and attributed to Jean-Francois Revel, by Jeane Kirkpatrick in her August 20, 1984 speech to the Republican national convention in Dallas, Texas. As cited in Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (rev.), ed. William Safire, W. W. Norton & Co. (2004), p. 1029 ISBN 0393059316, 9780393059311
1980s

“The United States is the only country where these revolutions are simultaneously in progress and organically linked in such a way as to constitute a single revolution.”

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun https://archive.org/details/withoutmarxorjes00reverich (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson (1980)
1970s

“Today in America—the child of European imperialism—a new revolution is rising. It is the revolution of our time... and offers the only possible escape for mankind today.”

Without Marx or Jesus; the new American Revolution has begun (1971) quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, Chapter 5 (1980)
1970s

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