“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

Whereas ordinary officers must be content with behaving correctly in front of their men, the great leaders have always carefully stage-managed their effects.

No, I’m not talking about the Russians; I mean the Germans. In spite of everything, to have pushed so far!

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.

I wouldn’t mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

The future does not belong to men.

I am not bad, thank you. But don’t worry, one of these days I shall certainly die.

France cannot be France without greatness.

Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time.

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

One cannot govern with ‘buts’.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

For all of us Frenchmen, the guiding rule of our epoch is to be faithful to France.

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

The evolution toward Communism is inevitable.

Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life.

State ownership! It leads only to absurd and monstrous conclusions; state ownership means state monopoly, concentrated in the hands of one party and its adherents, and that state brings only ruin and bankruptcy to all.

The long night of human history is drawing at last to its conclusion.

I don’t want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I’d rather work until 6 or 7.

The work of bestial degradation, begun by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by the Germans in defeat.

Things are working out… towards their dazzling conclusions.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

It economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions.